Twelve
by varietyofwords
Summary: Chuck and Blair. Post-Finale. A series of one-shots following the Bass' first year of marriage. "Don't you think things could change in twelve months?"
1. January 1, 2013

**Author's Note**: These one-shots will follow the Bass family through Chuck and Blair's first year of marriage and vary in both rating and length. First up, the honeymoon! (Rating: T)

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_December 31, 2012 - January 01, 2013_

"And then after Waldorf Designs is a resounding success at Fashion Week, we will take some time off. I thought we'd host Thanksgiving in our new apartment before spending Christmas with Daddy and Roman, Mother and Cyrus in Paris. And we'll ring in the New Year in New York at the Empire's New Year's party before returning home for our private celebration of the end of a fabulous two thousand and thirteen."

"Hmm," her husband agrees, tracing tight circles over her naked hipbone. "I didn't realize resolutions dictate where we are for the holidays. Don't you think things could change in twelve months?"

"No," she replies as though he has asked a rather stupid question. She stops playing with the patch of hair on his chest, stills her fingers as she speaks. "Besides, planning our holidays, making sure they are perfect is part of my resolution for the year. I want two thousand and thirteen to be better than two thousand and twelve."

"Why? I thought twenty-twelve was a great year."

"Are you insane, Bass?" Blair replies as she pushes herself up and away from him. Her naked limbs slide against his, and she tugs the sheet slung over them up to cover her exposed breasts. "How could you ever describe two thousand and twelve as a great year?"

He fingers his own wedding band in a silent reply, moves his hand so he can slide the platinum band - his only attire at the moment - across her knee cap under the sheet. She moves her knee away from him, moves to sit on her knees so she can tower over him in her displeasure.

"In two thousand and twelve, I was trapped in a marriage due to an idiotic contract. I mean, a dowry? Really? This is the twenty-first century. And then you set me free and I wasted it on Dan Humphrey. When I finally woke up, you said I was too late."

Chuck winces at the reminder. He had been so angry in the moment, thrown away the only thing he ever loved in a mindless quest to win back his father.

"And then I won you back and we had to stay apart. I thought it was almost over, but," her voice breaks with emotions and she turns her head so she is no longer looking him in the eye. "You left for Moscow and I thought you had – _died_."

The last word is said in anguish, punctuated with tears that shine in the corner of her eyes.

"Hey," Chuck replies, pulling her back towards him. She resists for a moment, but eventually sinks into his embrace. She presses her face into the crook of his neck as he wraps his arms around her back and holds her close to his chest. "I'm safe. I was always safe. I just needed you to trust me."

She nods her head meekly against his neck, wills her tears to stop falling as he traces the outline of each vertebra down her back lightly. She will not mention what happened on the rooftop; will not force him to remember any more of the events from that horrible night.

"Do you know why I love twenty-twelve so much?" He asks her softly as he dips his head and places a soft, tender kiss against her exposed left shoulder. "I'm ending the year with you as my wife."

She grins against his neck, presses a kiss against the spot just below his jawline. She loves that term – wife.

"Everything else doesn't matter because I finally have you back in my life, back in my bed," he suggests lewdly with a press of his thigh in the space between her legs. "Back to being mine."

Chuck nibbles the tender skin of her neck in an emphasis of his words. She shifts against him, moves to slide her leg over his hips and straddle him. His hands curl around her hip bones and help guide her to hover over him.

"I was always yours," she replies as she sinks down against him. "Even when I didn't want to admit it.

"Yes," he replies in a straggled hiss as she slides herself back and forth against him. "But now the world knows it, Mrs. Bass."

She moans at the name, moans at the way he feathers kisses against her neckline. He undulates his hips, tries to guide himself inside her, but she raises her hips in the opposite direction and holds herself above him for just a moment.

"Blair," he says sternly as he digs his fingers into her hips and tries to press her down. She lifts her head from his neck and offers his a teasing smile as she runs her right fingers down his left cheek.

"And what are your resolutions?

"I don't have any," he hisses quickly, painfully as his lower half tries to connect with hers. She pats his cheek, tries to get him to focus on her reprimanding glare.

"Now, now," she reminds him. "You know how I feel about directionless, goalless people. No husband of mine will start the New Year without a goal."

"Fine," he huffs. "My resolution is to have another bacchanal with you. Starting now."

She rolls her eyes, huffs in response. She asks him if he has any goals for Bass Industries or for the Empire, frowns when he replies that nothing comes to mind.

"I already accomplished my goals," he replies in a tight voice. "I grew up. I became a man people can respect, a man worthy of your love. And I became your husband. I have no other goals because there is nothing left for me to accomplish."

She presses her lips against his, gasps when he rolls her onto her back and slides inside. For a moment, she is too busy being overwhelmed by feelings and emotions, too busy feeling him move inside her to register what he is saying. But as she comes for him, as the world outside celebrates the dawning of the New Year, she hears him loud and clear.

"I love you, too," she moans in response as he presses his forehead into her slick yet soft neck. He finishes with her proclamation, feels the return of all his senses as she runs her fingers in slow patterns over the healing and fresh places where her nails dug in.

Fireworks erupt outside their hotel window, and she watches the dark sky become splashed and awash in color in a celebration of the past and the future. She can put all the bad of two thousand and twelve behind her, but she can also celebrate the good of the past, enjoy the present, and hope for the future.

"Happy New Year, Chuck."

Chuck lifts his head for a moment to catch her distant gaze, drops it again in a blissful sigh as he shifts in the bed and begins to pepper her naked skin with kisses. She squirms against his ministrations, slides her hands through his dark hair, and marvels at the way her diamond and her simple wedding band catch and reflect the colors.

"Happy New Year, Mrs. Bass."


	2. February 14, 2013

**Author's Note:** Thank you all for your kind reviews. Please know that I cherish each and every one of them even when I do not have the time to respond individually. Also, I am now on twitter if you want to follow me there. Same username and everything. (Rating: K+)

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_February 14, 2013_

The world is cloaked in pink and red, dotted with anatomically incorrect hearts and visions of Cupid and his arrows of love. She grew up loving the holiday; the hopeless romantic inside her reveled in the greeting cards and red boxes of chocolate. There is always a party to attend or a romantic dinner for two to be had because women like Blair Waldorf are never alone on Valentine's Day.

A relationship coming out party on Valentine's Day is a cliché in and of itself, but Serena is her best friend and she promised to support her. The beautiful, carefree blonde stayed in New York, and Blair is learning that they don't need to live on opposite sides of Central Park to shine. Because, tonight, she positively glows, sparkles brighter than the Harry Winston diamond on her finger.

She curls her hand reflexively around the champagne flute Serena handed to her upon her arrival, catches the eye of her husband across the room as she pretends to lift the flute to her lips. Her husband—

She loves that – _her_ husband.

Her husband's eyes sparkle at her smoke and mirrors, at their deception of all those around them. They will tell everyone soon enough, but tonight they are enjoying the secret they keep between them.

She excuses herself from the gaggle of women clustered around her, heads towards the kitchen of Humphrey's new apartment to dispose of the beverage. A waiter moves past her, accidentally cutting off her path to the kitchen, and she quickly deposits her champagne on his passing serving tray.

"Can I get you something else, ma'am?"

"A glass of water," she replies offhandedly to the man. The waiter in the pressed white shirt nods, promises to return soon with her order.

She moves across the room, heads towards her husband rather than the group of women she had been talking to. Her hand slides across his backside, a visual reminder to those single (and otherwise taken) ladies about that he is hers. Her husband snakes his arm about her waist, pulls her towards him in a visual remind to those single (and otherwise taken) men salivating over the brunette in the red dress that she is his.

"Mrs. Bass," he breathes in greeting against her cheek as he kisses her hello.

She smiles at him demurely, ignores the way their friends groan at the look on the married couple's face. Dan ducks away, heads off to warn the guests to knock before entering any room with a shut door.

"Happy Valentine's Day, Nate," Blair says to the man going stag tonight.

His relationship with Sage ended just as the New Year began. The success of the Spectator following the publication of Gossip Girl's identity meant he had little time to engage in the petty games and caddy infighting of a high school girl, even if she is Queen of Constance and likes to be watched.

"I'd say the same back to you, Blair, but I'm afraid your husband might blow a gasket if I do," Nate replies with a laugh as raises his glass of the alcohol of his choice to his lips. Blair sweeps her eyes to Chuck, reaches away to smooth away the tense wrinkles about his eyes. Jealousy fuels him, and he lurches forward to capture her lips with his.

Momentarily stunned, she freezes at the feeling before melting into him. He fights for control, for dominance and she fights back with a stroke of her hand against his cheek. They break apart after a long minute; respond to Nate's uncomfortable grimace with smiles that say they don't care about his discomfort with their public displays of affection.

Chuck's hand, which had begun to travel up the deep swoop of the back of her dress, falls back to her hipbone. His fingers tease in tight circles, drift so close to their secret that she has to bat his hand away.

"Your water, ma'am," the waiter interrupts, offering the young woman at glass of sparkling water. Blair takes it gratefully, feels refreshed almost as soon as the clear, cool liquid slides down her parched throat.

"What? No Dom tonight?" Serena asks as she joins the other members of the Non-Judging Breakfast Club. "Is something up with you? Because I ordered that Dom just for you since I thought you'd at least be celebrating the 'most romantic day of the year' – your words, not mine – with your husband, even if you don't agree with the point of this party."

Blair curses Serena's recently acquired tools of perception and sleuthing. She never should have allowed to blonde to join her and her bitches in planning and executing her takedown of Bart Bass. She knew that would come back to bite her in the end, although she thought in the moment that Serena would flub her role rather than one day use her newly developed skills against the master. She opens her mouth, races to find an answer about breakouts and skincare that the blonde would actually believe.

"Oh, we are," Chuck interjects smoothly. His mouth morphs into a lewd, suggestive smirk. "Blair's just drinking water in order to up her stamina in preparation of tonight. I don't want her getting muscle spasms from dehydration in the middle of me —"

"Ugh," Serena groans as she wrinkles her nose in disgust. "I didn't want to know that."

"Then you should know better than to ask," Blair replies pointedly in mild annoyance. Serena always wants to talk about her relationship with Dan, wants to analyze it for hours, and never gives Blair the same opportunity just because a large – but healthy – component of her relationship with Chuck consists of sex.

"Georgina," Serena replies as the spies another brunette making her way across the apartment join the group. "I'd ask how you are, but I really don't care."

"Now, now," Georgina chides. "Is that any way to treat your boyfriend's agent?"

"Yes," Serena replies testily. "I don't recall adding your name to the guest list. Shouldn't you be spending Valentine's Day with your husband?"

"Yes," Dan adds as he rejoins the group. "What happened to Philip?"

"Did something happen to Philip?" Georgina asks in a sincere question.

Georgina flits her gaze from Dan to Serena to Nate. Before her eyes can land on Blair, though, the other married brunette dismisses herself and slinks away from the group. Having drained the glass of water in order to avoid talking to either Georgina or Dan – a prospect that makes her stomach clench – she is in desperate need of the bathroom.

The small bathroom off the living room where the party is being held is occupied, and so Blair is forced to use the bathroom connected to Dan and Serena's bedroom. She snorts derisively at the hair products lined up in the glass shower and on the countertop by the sink, finds their presence ironic and unnecessary considering neither of them washes their hair on a daily basis.

She pulls at the fabric of her red dress, an Eleanor Waldorf Original that she is unable to remove without assistance. Eventually, she manages to pulls the dress up enough that she can pull down her panties and use the restroom.

Her eyes zero in on the streaks of pink and red staining her La Perlas, the dime-size circle in the middle that looks like rusty Brooklyn. Her stomach lurches, her heart drops, and she clamps her legs shut as though she can forcibly keep things inside her.

Her brain starts to shut off, her body begins to numb even as she frantically pulls up her panties and yanks down her dress. She steps away from the toilet, refuses to look down least her world has become colored red and pink even more, and rejoins the party with a face devoid of emotion.

Blair spies Serena and Dan chatting with Dan's publisher; Georgina hovering behind them waiting for scraps from Dan's success. Her eyes skim the crowd, finally spot her husband standing near the bar ordering fortitude for a long night of playing nice. She crosses over to him quickly, at least as quickly as thighs pressed together will allow.

She appears next to him with arms folded across her chest just as his eyes sweep across her face. He pauses, reaches out anxiously to grasp one of her hands.

"What's wrong?"

"I—"

She stumbles, stutters to find the words she is looking for. They had been so happy, and she loathes to burst the bubble they have been living in.

"Please, Blair. Tell me what's wrong," Chuck pleads with eyes wide in anxiety. "You can tell me. It's just you and me here."

"We need to go to hospital."

He recoils at the comment, asks her to repeat herself. She tries, shifts her weight on her heels as she commands herself not to cry. Chuck takes one more look at her, places the newly filled glass of scotch on the bar in the loud thud. He pulls out his cell phone, calls Arthur to meet them out front, and places his hand against the small of her back in order to guide her toward the elevator.

"Hey," Serena protests as the couple passes by her on their way to the exit. "You promised to stay till ten forty-five. It's only nine-oh—"

The blonde chokes on the time, swallows her condemnation at the looks on Chuck and Blair's faces. She extracts herself from the group she had been conversing with, follows her step-brother and new sister-in-law to the elevator.

"Is everything okay?" Serena asks anxiously.

Blair adverts her gaze, stands stoically apart from her husband with Chuck's hand resting in the small of her back and her own arms folded across her chest. Blair looks broken, scared, like she did when she woke up from the car crash and heard the news about her baby, about Chuck.

"B," she says softly, stepping towards her best friend. Her gaze shifts to Chuck, who jerks his head tightly in a verbal instruction to back off. The elevator doors slide open, and Chuck sweeps them both into the box decorated in a contemporary fashion.

"Call me if—" Serena begins to say before being cut off by the shutting of the metal doors. She stands there for a minute, contemplates chasing after the pair when Dan calls her name and instructs her to rejoin the party.

Mister and Mrs. Bass stand side by side in the elevator, stand together in silence. Chuck runs an anxious hand down his face, fists the other in the fabric across the small of Blair's back. The elevator beeps, narrates its decent towards the ground floor of the building. When the numbers become smaller, he turns his body towards her.

"I – I'm going to carry you, okay?"

The hesitation in his voice, the softness in which he speaks would startle some of his business competitors but not Blair, who only meekly nods her head in reply. His arm sweeps under her knees, lifts her off the ground until he is holding her bridal style when he steps off the elevator. She slips her arms around his neck, presses her face against his chest as he carries her out to the car.

"Home, Mister Bass?" Arthur questions as he opens the back door of the limo for his employer and his employer's bride.

"The hospital," Chuck replies tightly as he deposits Blair on the bench seat in back. "Hurry, Arthur."

Arthur rushes to the front of limo, slides in, and pulls away from the curb as soon as traffic will allow him to. He steps on the gas, runs yellow light after yellow light (and one or two red ones, for good measure), and cuts corners until he has reached the nearest hospital in record time. He hurries ahead to tell the emergency room staff to expect the Basses, watches with one of the nurses as a very worried Chuck carries in his wife.

"What's wrong, sir?"

"My wife," Chuck answers anxiously. "She's pregnant. She said she needed to go to the hospital."

"Have you seen any blood?" The nurse asks as she gestures for Chuck to set Blair down on the gurney. "Has she fainted?"

"No. I – I don't know," he replies hesitantly. He leans down, sweeps back the curls of Blair's hair so he can look her in the eyes. "Blair, what's wrong?"

"Bl—Blood," Blair replies calmly, devoid of emotion as she attempts to steel herself from the outcome she expects. Chuck's eyes widen further in panic.

"Sir," the nurse interrupts. "Can you help me get her dress off?"

Chuck nods, forces on the things he can change as he leaves those he cannot in the hands of the medical professionals clustering around them. He skillfully pulls down the hidden zipper in Blair's dress; he's had a lot of experience over the years with Waldorf Originals.

Chuck slides the dress over Blair's hips in a careful avoidance of her belly, clutches the red dress to his chest as the nurse moves to remove Blair's panties. For once, he is glad his skills at removing Blair's underwear are not in demand because his stomach lurches at the sight of the red and pink streaks across the fabric.

"How far along is she, Mister—" The nurse pauses, waits for Chuck to answer her spoken and unspoken question.

"Bass," he replies quickly as he counts backwards to their wedding night in his head. He offers the nurse a number, tries to round it up in the hopes that will make a difference. The nurse nods, purses her lips together as the doctor on call breezes into the room. She relays the information, offers to take the dress from Mister Bass as the doctor pulls the Doppler out of the drawer.

"I'm going to look for the heartbeat, Mrs. Bass," the doctor says as she squirts gel over Blair's belly.

With a face devoid of emotion, the doctor runs the wand over her patient's belly and listens for the heartbeat. Chuck waits with baited breath, watches the doctor's actions intensely, and nearly wails when the doctor removes the instrument and shakes her head at the nurse.

"Is it—"

Chuck chokes on the words, adverts his gaze from the doctor to look at his wife. Blair has shut her eyes at the result, squints so intensely that they will have to be pried open.

"When it's this early, sometimes we can't always hear this way," the doctor replies, trying to offer just the right amount of hope without making promises she cannot keep. "I'd like to try a trans-vaginal ultrasound to be sure."

She moves closer to the other end of the bed up by Blair's head, asks for permission and waits for it to be meekly given. When she moves out of the way, Chuck slides into her spot and picks up Blair's hand in his own. His fingers entwine with hers in a reflex. She turns her head, buries in in his chest so she will not have to watch the screen that has been wheeled near her head.

Her legs are parted, and the doctor begins her search to find a heartbeat for the desperate couple. She is staring so intently that she misses the way Chuck Bass reaches up to sweep the mass of curls from his wife's face, the way he places a gentle kiss near the corner of her eye. After a long pause, after the longest few minutes of Chuck Bass' life, the doctor hits a button and causes the other monitor to spring to life.

"There," the on-call doctor says, gesturing to the screen near her patient's head. The grainy black and white earns the attention of only Chuck, who scrunches his forehead and tries to decipher what the grayscale picture means.

"That, Mister and Mrs. Bass, is your baby's heartbeat," the doctor says pointing to one point in particular. "See how it pulses, how this part seems to open and shut? That's it. Some people think it looks like a—"

"Butterfly," Chuck fills in with awe. "It looks like a butterfly beating its wings."

The young man drops his head, makes it level with his wife's face and tries to cajole her into looking. Timidly and with fingers still gripping her husband's tightly, Blair turns her head and allows the doctor to point out the heartbeat to her.

"See, Blair," Chuck adds gleefully as he raises their entwined fingers and kisses hers. "It looks like a butterfly. Do you see it?"

Blair nods her head slowly and silently as she raises her free hand to trace the picture on the screen. She finally cries, allowing her unshed tears of grief to become tears of relief that roll down her cheeks and meet her happy smile.

"Butterfly," she marvels.

Her husband presses his face to her cheek, allows their tears of happiness to blend as his lips are pulled into a smile over this wonderful, good omen. After all, they both know that butterflies – at least the ones of the Waldorf-Bass variety – never die.


	3. March 11, 2013

_March 11, 2013_

The sharp knock diverts his attention from the first page of his next manuscript to the front door, interrupts the solitude and the mocking blankness of the page in front of him. He glances up at the door, pushes back his chair, and knocks over his cup of coffee in surprise when the sound reverberates across the empty room again.

"I'm coming."

The greeting – a remnant of all those years he spent living on the other side of the Brooklyn Bridge – sounds foreign to those accustomed to the doormen and the maids and the elevators, which announce their presence and keep the undesirables away. He hastily grabs a towel off the kitchen counter, tries to wipe the liquid off his shirt before it stains before giving up and throwing the towel over the mess on the table rather than taking the time to mop up the spill. He ambles across the room, swings the door open widely, and drops his smile almost immediately when he sees who stands on the other side of the door.

"Humphrey," the visitor greets as she steps into his new apartment without an invitation. He watches her walk towards the living room, throws his hand up in exasperation over the way she acts as if she owns the place.

"I was actually just on my way out," he starts to tell her.

She throws a pointed look towards the overturned cup, soaking wet towel, and the abandoned manuscript in a rejection of his lie, calls him out on it, and manages to silence him immediately. She unbuttons her coat with the plan of peeling it off before she takes a seat on the couch, but she chooses to keep it in order to keep from prolonging this visit any longer than necessary.

"I'd ask how you are," she informs him with a dismissive air, "but I heard about your new manuscript. Have people lost their taste for your quote unquote love letter to Serena and the Upper East Side?"

"Did you just come here to insult me? Because if that's the case, Blair," Dan Humphrey answers with a gesture towards the front door, "you can just go."

Blair glances at the ground for a moment as she shifts her weight, as she contemplates his demand for her to leave. She pulls back the harsh façade she had been hiding behind when she looks back up and meets his gaze with her own.

"Actually, I came to talk to you," Blair replies softly.

Expectation hangs in the air between them as he cannot imagine what the new Mrs. Waldorf-Bass has to say to him, although he has plenty to say to her. His latest book proposal was soundly rejected by every publishing house in Manhattan, and he has a sinking feeling that newest union on the Upper East Side had something to do with it. Blair quips an eyebrow in a silent question at him, huffs in exasperation when he fails to follow the appropriate steps in a conversation.

"Aren't you going to ask me how I am?"

Dan rolls his eyes at the way she attempts to guide the conversation, at the way she acts as though he must be polite when she does not have. Deciding that this conversation will take longer than she planned, Blair takes a seat on the couch and daintily crosses her legs at the ankle as she tucks her feet to the side. She folds her hands her lap and glances up at him expectantly.

"How are you, Blair?"

Blair does not miss the annoyed tone in Dan's voice, but chooses to ignore it as she drops her gaze to her lap, to the place where her entwined fingers meet the reason why she came. She takes a deep breath, exhales in a shaky manner as she glances up to look Humphrey in the eye again.

"I'm…" she trails off, can no longer smother the smile behind the harsh mask of a queen reigning over shaky ground as her happiness bubbles over. "Pregnant."

"I'm pregnant," she repeats happier this time.

He recoils at the revelation, pieces together the timeline of their relationship as he stutters and stumbles over the information. He cannot imagine why she felt the need to inform him of her pregnancy before that of Serena and her family – or, so his presumes considering Serena has said nothing on the mater – since there is no way the date of conception could line up with their brief affair.

"Uh, you –"

Dan blunders over the words as his brain races to piece together a reason for her confiding in him. He has been this person for her before, has been the person to help her decide to move forward and face the truth and consequences of her actions.

"Do you – Do you need help getting a paternity —"

"No! God, no," she interrupts quickly as her eyes widen at the suggestion. She thinks back to the time before this one when she had been unsure of Chuck or Louis, back to the time when she had been seventeen and unsure of Chuck or Nate. And she laughs sardonically at the idea Dan has landed upon because this time she is sure, this time she is completely confident.

"For once in my life, there is no doubt. The baby is Chuck's," Blair informs him with a reassuring air. "Apparently, the pill is no match for a fever developed courtesy of a honeymoon with Chuck Bass."

"I really don't need to hear about that," Dan replies with a mouth twisted into a grimace. Blair shrugs her shoulders indifferently. She has become rather accustomed to the way the people in her life refuse to listen to even the tamest reference to her and Chuck's sex life.

"So," he trails off uncomfortably as he jams his hands into the pockets of his pants and looks at Blair in confusion. "If you aren't here for the number of a DNA testing center, then why are you here?"

Blair hesitates for just a moment, slides her hand gently across her stomach as she tries to gather her strength. She presses gently before hardening her features and pushing forth her demands.

"I need your assurance that Gossip Girl is dead," she insists emphatically. "That you aren't going to resurrect her when –"

She pauses, changes her word choice because she is trying to be more supportive of her best friend's choices. The last thing she needs right now is to be launched into yet another fight with Serena, to lose her best friend to the allure of Los Angeles any more than she already has.

"That you aren't going to resurrect her if you and Serena break up in the future."

"I told you all that Gossip Girl is dead months ago," Dan reminds her. He begins to tell her that with Gossip Girl's identity so publicly revealed – and by his own hand – it would be difficult for him to go back to exposing the Upper East Side's dark secrets and scandals once again. But Blair seems neither swayed nor assured by his words.

"You've told me a lot of things, Humphrey," Blair snaps in reply. "You pretended to be one person while all the while you schemed and lied and told horrible stories about me, about Serena, about people who at one time or another considered themselves your friend."

"Like you're any different?" Dan questions with a derisive snort. "You sent more tips into Gossip Girl than anyone else so don't pretend to be better than me. You're just upset that this whole time I had more power than you."

Blair purses her lips in a tight frown and rejects his reply with a fervent shake of her head. Serena may have fallen for his line, may have decided that Blair's anger comes from a place of jealousy, but Blair is not buying the narrative he is peddling.

"Besides, you said it yourself – we can all grow up and move on with our lives," Dan reminds her pointedly, gesturing to her diamond ring on her finger and the midsection of her body. "You and Chuck seemed to have wasted no time in the regard."

"Believe me, I have tried to move on. I have tried to put the past in the past, but it's not that simple," Blair rebukes. She shakes her head, tries to shake away the tears gathering in the corner of her eyes. "My –"

A quiet beat passes as Blair pauses and struggles to find the strength of say the word. Dan vacillates between waiting for the brunette to speak and trying to wrap up this conversation before it can go any further. This conversation is rather roundabout, rather repetitive of one he had only three months ago.

"My baby," Blair says wistfully with her voice breaking over every word. "My baby would have been fourteen months old this month. She would have been walking and talking and –"

Blair turns her head and looks out the windows. She can no longer stand to look at Dan as her private thoughts, as her private emotions that she has keep locked down for so long rush to the surface. A good queen never lets her subjects see her falter, and Blair cannot abide by the idea of letting Dan Humphrey of all people be the one to see her break.

"I don't know if Chuck and I would have raised her here in New York or Switzerland or Japan, but I know we would have raised her together because – because Chuck would have loved her just as much as he loves me. But you – you and your need to be talked about and lord power over all of us took that from us. You took her from me; you almost took Chuck. And then you pretended to be my friend."

"I shut down the site after the accident," Dan offers as though that absolves him of any complicity in the tragedy. "And I was your friend. I was there for you before and after the accident when you didn't know what to do."

"No," Blair sharply replies as she shifts her gaze back to Dan. Her voice turns harsh and foreboding as the anger flares inside her. "You may have shut down the site, but you carried on and furthered your own agenda."

"I didn't make you start dating me," Dan forcefully retorts. "No one makes Blair Waldorf do anything she does not want to do."

"You never forced me. You just twisted events to cast yourself as the good guy, to suit your own end. Played all of us as fools until you got what you wanted – Serena, me, an apartment on the Upper East Side. And then – you never even apologized to me. Not even after Gossip Girl's identity –"

The door to the apartment is pushed open in that moment, effectively silencing Blair as she sweeps teary eyes towards the door. The jovial and brightly shining blonde startles at the sight, shifts her gaze from Blair to Dan as the smile falls off her face.

"What's going on?" Serena asks cautiously as Blair moves to look back out the window. The blonde moves across the room, comes to sit next to her best friend as she drops her handbag onto the floor without a second thought. "B, are you alright?"

When Blair does not respond even after Serena squeezes her arm reassuringly, the blonde looks to her boyfriend and questions him as to why her best friend is clearly distraught in their home. Dan hesitates for a moment as he tries to figure out what to say when Blair steps in and answers for them both.

"It's the hormones," Blair says as she wipes away her tears and carefully avoids mussing up her make-up in the process. Serena repeats the statement back to her as a question, but twists the question mark into an exclamation point when she realizes what Blair might be saying.

"B, are you pregnant?" Serena asks excitedly.

Blair turns her head and offers her best friend a small smile in confirmation as Serena throws her arms about her best friend and gathers her into a hug. Serena squeals excitedly as she rocks her best friend side to side in her arms.

"When are you due?"

"September fourth," a deep voice answers from the front door. Serena pulls away, looks towards the speaker just as Dan and Blair do the same. Chuck Bass strolls into the home and focuses solely upon his wife; his eyes narrowing at the sight of tears clinging to the corner of her eyes.

"That's so exciting!" Serena gushes and then she cocks her head to the side as she mentally calculates the dates. "That's like – What? Three or four months along? So you must have –"

"It's a honeymoon baby," Chuck replies with a smirk as he moves to sit down next to his wife. He reaches out to grasp Blair's hand and pulls her fingers to his lips in a tender kiss. Blair rolls her eyes at his smugness.

"I'm so happy for you, B," Serena says before offering the same felicitations to her stepbrother.

She looks expectantly towards Dan, frowns when Dan only manages to grumble an emotionless congratulation. She brushes off her concern for a moment while she insists that they all go out to celebrate the impending arrival of her niece or nephew. Her friends agree after a bit of cajoling, and she pulls out her phone to call Nate and invite him to tag along.

Serena holds the phone to her ear whilst the line rings and rings. She picks the wet towel off the table, moves to throw it into the sink of the kitchen while Dan disappears into their bedroom to change his clothes. Chuck shifts in his seat, turns to face Blair so their knees are touching. He opens his mouth to question her; plans to speak to her in low, hushed tones so the noisy inhabitants of this apartment cannot hear private moments between a husband and his wife.

"How did you know I was here?" Blair questions softly as Chuck holds both her hands and runs the pads of his thumbs over her knuckles soothingly.

"I came over to talk to Lily," Chuck murmurs in reply. "Vanya said you were here, and when you weren't in Lily's apartment…"

He trails off, tries to cajole her into an explanation before he has to ask. Her eyes sweep to the ground, and his fingers reach out to gently stroke her jawbone in soft encouragement.

"I just wanted him to apologize," she replies in a barely audible voice. "I know things worked out. You and I ended up together in the end, but –"

She sighs, lifts her head, and looks him at him with cloudy eyes. Chuck shifts closer to her, presses his forehead against hers, and allows his hot breath to ghost across her lips as he speaks, as her eyes flutter shut.

"I know you miss her. And I know that you're scared. Valentine's Day scared me too," he confesses in a low, soothing voice. "But whether or not Dan Humphrey apologizes doesn't change the fact that we're having a baby. A baby we are going to love as much as we love one another."

He moves just a millimeter closer, presses his lips against hers. Her eyes widen in surprise, flutter shut again at the sensation. It is just the lightest of pressure meant to reassure her rather than pull her into the undercurrent of passion. She smiles against him and returns his reassurance with a stroke of her fingers against his cheek. He shivers at the feeling, closes his eyes as the feeling of bliss courses through him.

Even after they break apart, Chuck and sit with foreheads still touching for just a moment as their lips quirk into small smiles. Neither of them notices the way Serena watches them from the kitchen with just a touch of concern, with just an overwhelming amount of joy.

Dan returns with a new plaid shirt and his coat just as Serena finally reaches ahold of Nate and tells him to drop whatever he is going at the _Spectator_ because he just has to come out with them tonight. She barely has to cajole the final member of the non-Judging Breakfast Club into compliance. Nate knows better than to protest when Serena is this jubilant about something.

She pockets the phone excitedly as she returns to the living room and announces that Nate will meet them at the Oak Room in half an hour. Chuck stands first, offers Blair his hand as she moves off the couch. The men and women in the room break into couplings as they gravitate towards the exit, gravitate towards their chosen partners.

"Is everything okay?" Serena questions when she realizes the tension in the room has still not dissipated. She looks from Blair to Dan and back again. "What were you and Blair talking about?"

Dan looks towards Blair and sees the way she tries to force him into keeping their conversation a secret with a harsh, cutting glare. He opens his mouth as the instinct to spread secrets overtakes him, but closes it when he sees a flash of something indescribable in her eyes.

"Just about how much Chuck is going to love Blair's baby," Dan replies. Chuck immediately and involuntarily smiles at the comment because for once Dan Humphrey is actually right about Chuck Bass' future. "And about how lucky he or she will be to be born into a world without Gossip Girl."

Serena smiles before her eyes settle on overturn mug on the dining table near her. She snatches the mug off the table and raises it up as though to offer a toast.

"I think we can all drink to that," she informs them with a happy laugh and a wide smile. "Well, all of us except for Blair. I'd hate to see what a child of Chuck Bass' would be like if they got their first taste of scotch in utero."


	4. April 8, 2013

**Author's Note:** I could not have written this chapter without the post on the 1907 Charles Guggenheimer House I found on the blog, Daytonian in Manhattan. Worth a read, if you are so inclined. (Rating: K)

* * *

_April 8, 2013_

"Hmm," the poised brunette hums as her eyes appraise the size of the master closet. The room is slightly larger than her closet growing up, but only has two shelves for shoes and no storage place for her expansive collection of hats and headbands. "It's a little small."

The relator's face falls. Newly placed on the market, this penthouse appeared to meet all the requirements on her clients' long list – a penthouse on the most sought after street on the Upper East Side, a minimum of three bedrooms plus maid's quarters, views of Central Park, and a private elevator. The place even comes with rooftop access, which the husband had wanted and the wife quickly kyboshed.

"I suppose we could turn the room next door into a closet," the client speculates after a moment of contemplation. "You could have this one, Chuck."

"I thought we already had plans for the room next door," her husband replies. Blair furrows her features in frustration and sighs over how right he is.

The room next door, the one they left just before seeing the largest bedroom was immediately reserved. The proximity to the master bedroom made it ideal, and she contemplated installing French doors between the two rooms before she saw the size of the closet. Maybe they could use the room next door as her closet and reserve the room further down the hall? She considers the idea, starts to weigh the pros and cons when her husband beats her to it.

"If we turn that room into a closet and use the other, we won't have a guest room for your father to use when he and Roman visit. Unless," he adds with a teasing smile, "we make them bunk with the maid or sleep with your shoes."

Blair looks at Chuck as though he has sprouted another limb, completely aghast over the suggestion. She would never make Daddy share a room with the help or stay the night in her closet.

"We could put Daddy and Roman up in a hotel," she suggests half-heartedly. "It's not like you don't own a couple."

"We own a couple," Chuck corrects, stressing their co-ownership of Bass Industries and the Empire. While he may be the CEO and President, what is his is hers. "But we both know that's not what you want."

Blair sighs, acknowledges his response with an agreeable nod and lips pursed in concentration. She isn't too keen on the idea because she wants Daddy and Roman to feel welcome in her home, wants Daddy to want to visit her more often.

"Besides, our friends have a history of moving in with us when they lose their direction," Chuck reminds her half-teasingly yet still partially serious.

Serena moved in with Dan two months ago, and the couple had thrown a party to celebrate their reunion. Yet Serena's best friend and her step-brother both know it is only a matter of time before she comes in search of alternative accommodations. Both are confident the relationship will fizzle and implode in the future given the blonde and the Brooklynite failed to address their personal and relationship issues before jumping back into bed together.

The other blonde in the Non-Judging Breakfast Club lived at the Empire's penthouse until he stepped off the elevator and walked into the penthouse one too many times without announcing his presence in advance. Blair had offered up Serena's old room at the Waldorf penthouse for his use until he or, better yet, the new Mister and Mrs. Bass could find a more permanent solution. Eleanor squashed the idea almost immediately, stating that she was not running a flop house for Blair's friends. So Nate still lives with Chuck and Blair in the penthouse, thus requiring the couple of keep the volume of their activities, down much to Blair's chagrin.

"I'm not going to subject the help to sharing a bed with Nate," Chuck says with a shudder. "He's not a particularly pleasant bed partner."

The realtor raises an eyebrow at the muffled confession before smoothing it away behind her mask of professionalism. One does not become the realtor of choice to people like the Basses by being judgmental.

"So I guess this place is off the list," Blair replies dismissively with a shrug.

She turns on her heels, heads out of the too small closet to rejoin her husband in the doorway. The dejected relator follows her in the master bedroom. She had been banking on a quick sale and a large, cash commission when the Basses first hired her, but each property has been found to lacking in one way or another and the search has dragged on for weeks now.

"Where to next?" Chuck questions as they move through the master bedroom, and the relator begins flipping through her collection of printed MLS listings. She riffles through one more time before raising her head and quietly apologies that she has no more properties to show them, not unless they want to view a few on the Upper West Side.

"The Upper West Side?" Blair questions indignantly. "Don't you know who we are? We're Manhattan royalty, an Upper East Side power couple. We cannot live on the Upper West Side!"

"I –"

Blair cuts the relator off, turns on her heels to stare at her husband in a full panic. He moves towards her, steps directly in front of her in an attempt to create a screen of privacy between them and the realtor.

"Chuck, we cannot buy an apartment on the Upper West Side," she rebukes harshly with a twinge of desperation. "A queen cannot rule with from the wrong side of Central Park."

"No one expects you to," Chuck replies as he runs his hands comfortingly up and down her arms over the sleeves of her coat. "But we cannot continue to live at the Empire or sneak away to your mother's penthouse for alone time."

She internalizes the reminder, accepts his comments without another one of her own. Her plan for two thousand and thirteen has already been derailed enough as it is and she cannot stomach the idea of this being put off any longer. She thought for sure that she and Chuck would be in an apartment of their own by now even with her stringent list of demands. Blair opens her mouth, begins to tell the relator to work overtime to find them something when the phone in her coat pocket begins to ring.

The name of the director of public relations for Waldorf Designs flashes on the screen when she pulls the BlackBerry out of her pocket. She steps away from Chuck and the relator, holds the phone up to her ear as she stares down at Central Park from the large window.

"No," she hisses when the problem is explained to her. "Why would you think Waldorf Designs would ever broker a deal with J.C. Penny's?"

She listens to the weak apologies and even weaker excuses, tells the caller to hold on for a moment before moving back over to Chuck and telling him she has to go. He nods his head in understanding, places a quick peck against her lips in goodbye. She smiles at him when they break apart, moves the phone back to her ear, and morphs her features back into a malicious glare.

"B for Waldorf does not sell at discount department stores!"

When she is out of earshot, when it is just him and the relator alone in the room, Chuck advances on the woman and the woman widens her eyes in fear. Mister Bass is known as a ruthless, driven businessman accustomed to getting his way, and the relator has failed to deliver the product she has been hired to source. Chuck digs into the pocket of his pants, pulls out his BlackBerry, and lunches the internet browser. A quick taping against the keys, he calls up the website had been looking at before he met his wife for a pre-house hunting lunch and then holds out the phone.

The relator swallows the nervous lump in her throat as she takes then outstretched offering into her own hands. She glances at the website, offers her client a look of surprised over what she sees.

"Mister Bass, this isn't what your wife –"

"Trust me," Chuck replies, interrupting the woman with a knowing smirk. "I know my wife better than I know myself."

* * *

The car service drives down East Seventy-Third Street from Lexington Avenue, stops in front of the building located at one hundred and twenty-nine. Blair peers out through the window, questions the driver with an indignant tone because he is clearly too incompetent to perform the simple task of returning her home. The door is opened for her and she hesitantly slides out the vehicle knowing full well what happened the last time her ride stopped in an unfamiliar area.

"Chuck," she breathes in relief when she spies her husband standing on the sidewalk holding open the door for her.

She walks towards him, eyes him curiously as he loops his arm about her waist and gestures to the brownstone in front of them. Brownstone is the wrong word given the coloring of the home, and her breath catches in her throat at the sight. Her eyes sweep over the home, fall to the beautiful front door and the woman waiting there.

"What's going on?" She asks cautiously, curiously. His smile is infectious, and she cannot help but add one to her own face.

"Susan," Chuck replies with a gesture towards to the relator waiting by the front door, "is going to show us this townhouse."

"But—"

She begins to protest but is silenced by the feeling of Chuck's lips against her own. The kiss is sweet and slow yet still carries the undercurrent of passion that threatens to sweep her away. He breaks away, squeezes her hip, and offers her a knowing look.

"I've seen the scrapbook, Blair," Chuck reminds her in a low voice, in a near whisper for her ears only. "This place looks exactly like the one you drew on the page labeled 'My Future Home'."

She frowns, claims not to know what scrapbook he is referring to as he escorts her towards the spot where Susan is waiting. The relator greets her clients, opens the home with the key provided to her by the seller's relator, and begins narrating the tour of the five-story dwelling just placed on the market this morning.

"This neo-Italian Renaissance townhouse was completed in nineteen-oh-seven and was designed by Henry Allen Jacobs for Charles Guggenheimer," Susan explains as the couple look about the entry way of the home. "Clad in limestone, the home boasts five stories, including the mansard roof, above an American basement."

She takes them up the stairs to the second floor, points out the triple arches framing three sets of French doors. The relator watches the couple carefully, watches the way Mrs. Waldorf-Bass apprises each room she is shown. Susan points out the historical aspects of the home as she leads the husband and wife to the third floor with its single, carved limestone balcony connected by three windows just off the office.

They pass through the first bedroom on the third floor, and Susan points out how perfect it is as a guest bedroom for Mrs. Waldorf-Bass' father on his visits to Manhattan. Blair hums a noncommittal answer, follows the woman through the subsequent bedrooms and bathrooms.

The relator leads them up to fifth floor, skipping the fourth in favor of showing off the master bedroom and large en-suite bathroom per Mister Bass' request. The relator breathes a sigh of relief when Mrs. Waldorf-Bass enters the closet and does not protest about the size as she had at the property shown earlier this morning.

"And the fourth floor?" Blair questions as she eyes the relator suspiciously. The brunette suspects the woman skipped it on purpose; that there must be something displeasing about the fourth floor to cause her to do so.

The relator nods her head, leads the couple to the final story with baited breath in anticipation over making this sale. Susan steps aside once they reach the first door on the fourth floor, affording Blair the opportunity to open the door for herself and creating space for Mister Bass to follow in behind his wife without the relator leading the way. She hoovers by the door, watches curiously as Mister Bass watches his wife with a bemused smile.

After a moment of silence, Chuck steps behind Blair and places his hands against her hips in order to encourage her to pause in her pacing appraisal of the room. She freezes, stills against the sensation as he speaks.

"There's only one room upstairs, and I know you wanted a room right next door," Chuck reminds her softly.

His voice tickles the nape of her neck, and she shivers as his hands slide across her chest to undo the buttons of her warm coat. He pulls back the fabric to offer him better access before ghosting his hand across her form and placing it softly against the gentle swell made unnoticeable to the common observer thanks to the cut of her dress.

"But I think this room would be perfect for the baby's nursery."

Susan's eyebrows rise in shock. Her clients had not mentioned that they were expecting a child, and the knowledge takes her by surprise. And then her cheeks color in embarrassment over the way she is clearly interrupting her clients' private moment when Mister Bass begins feathering kisses down the slope of his wife's neck.

She is just about to step outside the room, just about to leave them alone when she notices how Mister Bass' fingers have begun searching for the zipper on the side of his wife's dress. Susan clears her throat, reminds the two of them that she is still present before things can go any further. Blair steps away from her husband, works on buttoning her coat when an idea hits her and her eyes widen.

"Maid's quarters?"

The question reminds the relator of the series of rooms off the kitchen that she skipped, and she immediately promises both their existence and to show them to her clients next. After a moment, after Mrs. Waldorf-Bass has adjusted her clothing, Susan leads the couple down the winding staircase and back through the kitchen.

Once again, she steps aside and allows Blair to lead the way. The brunette pushes open the door, sweeps her eyes across the bedroom and small sitting room before settling her gaze on the stout woman waiting on the side of the room furthest from the door.

"What –" Blair begins to question as the woman ambles over to her, gathers her into a hug without worry or concern for her insubordination. The woman in the pressed uniform and the headband fixed near her bun bounces happily from foot to foot, smiles over Blair's shoulder at the only man the room when the woman returns her hug.

"Dorota," Blair breathes in surprise when she breaks the hug, steps back, and eyes the women in surprise. "What are you doing here?"

"Mister Chuck call," Dorota informs her. "He say you buying house and ask if I want to come work for you."

"Work for us? But Mother said—"

"You forget who I work for," Dorota interrupts sharply before smiling widely, before offering Blair a poorly kept secret. "I always work for you. I quit years ago had it not been for you, Miss Blair. And now I come and take care of you and Mister Chuck and the little Miss Blair."

Chuck opens his mouth, begins to inform the maid that they do not know if the baby is a boy or a girl yet, but his wife cuts him off as plans begin to formulate in her mind.

"Dorota," Blair replies, looking over her shoulder at her husband with a smile. He watches determination settle across her face, watches her walk out of the room and head towards the front entrance of the townhouse. "Call the contractor. We have an entire house to decorate by August."

"Yes, Miss Blair," Dorota replies happily as she pulls out her own BlackBerry and dials the number of the contractor she used for the creation of Miss Serena's room and the new offices of Waldorf Designs. She follows the brunette out of the room looking the happiest she has since before Blair moved out of the Waldorf penthouse.

"Your wife has quite the minion," Susan says to Chuck when Blair and Dorota are out of earshot. Chuck, who had been watching the brunette and the maid leave, looks at the realtor and shakes his head at her misunderstanding of the relationship she just saw.

"No, not minion," Chuck corrects. "Blair doesn't love minions."


	5. May 22, 2013

**Author's Note:** In addition to quoting _Siddhartha_, this story also borrows from another work by Herman Hesse entitled _Gertrude_. The full quote reads: "Youth ends when egotism does; maturity begins when one lives for others". The first two sections of this chapter are safely within the K-rating, but the final section jumps to M. If that's not your thing, please feel free to skip. I promise you won't miss much in the way of plot development.

* * *

_May 26, 2013_

He clears his throat as he pushes back his chair and stands up from his seat at the dining table. The tablecloth shifts with his movements, and he carefully moves his napkin from his lap to a crumpled mess besides his place setting as the table. The five pairs of eyes around the table turn to look at him; watch him in anticipation over what he could have to say in between the final course and dessert.

"On the ride from the airport, I heard the sounds of sirens," he informs the group of people assembled around the table with him. His words, his recollection is meant for those in attendance, although one more person hovers in the corner of the room to hear what he has to say. "Not an uncommon sound in Manhattan, but I was reminded of an instance not too long ago when sirens interrupted an important event and forced us all to hurry things along."

He pauses, allows those assembled to think for just a moment to what he could be referring to. One of the couples at the table, however, smiles at the remembrance immediately; turn their heads ever so slightly to share a private moment just between the two of them.

"I am referring, of course, to my speech," Cyrus teases, and those assembled around the table laugh softly at his joke. "Blair, Chuck, if I may, I thought I would finish tonight what you all missed out on it."

Chuck and Blair give him accommodating nods of encouragement; hand over the floor to Blair's stepfather without comment. The short, balding man wraps his knuckles against the table, shifts his weight as he pulls his black notebook out of the pocket of his suit coat. His words – hastily written all those months ago – are still as boldly etched into the paper as the day he penned them,s till as true today as they were in December.

"To quote _Siddhartha_, we are not going in circles. We are going upward. The path is a spiral. We have already climbed many steps," Cyrus quotes, finally finishing the phrase he had started and been force to abandon in haste. He flexes the spine of the notebook in his hand, glances up to catch the eye of his wife, whom he offers a smile. "To some, Chuck and Blair, your relationship might appear to be a loop, a cycle of happiness and elation, of sadness and sorrow you will never escape."

His words are spoken sadly, spoken harshly against the misguidance of the doubters. He watched the change in his stepdaughter, watched the way she fell in love and fell apart from close-up. And he watched the same occur in his new son-in-law, watch the way he fell in love and fell apart from afar. And all the while he admired the way they grew and learned and challenged themselves and each other even when they couldn't even be friends.

"But those of us who know you, who know of the love between you, know that through this relationship you have grown stronger, gained knowledge, and climbed higher and higher towards the people you were meant to become."

He glances up from the words he has written and sees Harold, Roman, and Eleanor nodding their heads ever so slightly in a silent approval of his words. He looks to the host and hostess of the evening, pauses to watch his son-in-law drape his arm across Blair's chair and trail his fingers against her shoulder for a moment. Blair turns to look at Chuck, glows and beams as she offers him a small, uncharacteristically sweet smile.

Cyrus closes the book with a soft thud, places it on the table in front of him. The rest of his words are unimportant now, unnecessary given the cause of today's celebration. December to May has changed the couple before him, forcing them to climb many more steps.

"When I wrote these words, I thought I knew the path before you, Blair, Chuck. Today, though, I stand here knowing you have already climbed further up the spiral than you had in December."

Blair's hand slides off the table, slides to press against the swell of her belly. The next chapter of the life she shares with Chuck is obvious now – written on her frame so even the least observant of onlookers can no longer deny it.

"To quote Hermann Hesse once more, maturity begins when one lives for others. To live for your spouse changes you. Forces you to grow," Cyrus says as his eyes sweep to Eleanor, as Harold's sweep to Roman's. "But to live for a child is something entirely indescribable until you become a parent yourself."

Chuck shifts in his chair, and the corner of Cyrus' lips fall ever so slightly from where they had been pulled into a smile. He worries Chuck has misinterpreted him, misunderstood the process of becoming a parent. Cyrus knows he changed when Aaron was born, when the tiny infant was placed in his arms. But he also knows he changed when Blair entered his life, when he hugged her on the street after she realized he had outmaneuvered her. And he is confident that Lily would say the same about Chuck if she was here tonight.

And then he notices Blair's hand slip into Chuck's, notices the gentle squeeze and even gentler eyes his stepdaughter – no, his daughter – offers her husband. The silent way they communicate still stuns him to this day because a single touch for Chuck and Blair can often times speak volumes more than the most philosophical and poetic words Cyrus can find.

"Eleanor and I – and I am sure Roman and Harold would agree with us – cannot wait to become grandparents, to see and spoil our first grandchild. But we also cannot wait to see you hold your own child, to see the reflection of the maturity you have both obtained through this spiraling path upwards called life."

Cyrus reaches for the glass of wine in front of him on the table, raises in a toast to Chuck and Blair. The other half of his whole raises her glass along with him, and the other couple at the table scrambles to follow suit.

"Mazel tov!"

Glasses are clinked at the toast of congratulations, at the wish for good luck, and Cyrus takes a sip of the red wine before moving to sit back at the table. His wife pats his hand, leans over in her seat to tell him how lovely his speech was tonight. And yet his attention is fixated on the newly married couple seated across from his, fixated on the way Blair kisses Chuck's cheek ever so softly.

She presses her fingers against his cheek, presses the place her lips just left almost as though she is trying to trap her love for him. And Cyrus knows his daughter made the right choice when her husband presses his cheek back against her fingers, when her husband tries to trap his love for her with a squeeze of her hand.

* * *

She busies herself with the caterers, with making sure the dining room and kitchen of her new home are left spotless before their departure. Her efforts are unnecessary, particularly given the Polish maid at her side, but she feels she has to do something while Chuck finishes guiding her parents through a tour of their new townhouse.

Blair would have joined them, would have climbed all four flights of stairs over and over again if most of the rooms weren't still undergoing renovations. Chuck worries about every little thing these days, and he pushes for strict adherence to the do and do not list included in the guidebook to pregnancy stacked amongst his reading materials on one of the nightstands beside their bed. She teases him over it, asks him when Chuck Bass became such a sticker for the rules, but she also knows the answer and only pushes so far.

She swipes her finger across the icing at the base of the half-eaten cake that had been their dessert, slips the finger between her lips to lick off the frosting when Dorota's widening eyes catch her attention. The judgment she feels hangs hot and heavy against her skin, causes her to flush with shame even as she opens her mouth to chastise the maid. But Dorota beats her too it; excuses herself and pushes the caterers out of the kitchen without a murmured greeting.

Blair drops her hand to her side, grabs the blue dishtowel off the counter in front of her to wipe the white streaks off her finger before turning to greet her mother. The insecure sixteen-year-old girl she used to be clambers to escape, to send her sprinting off to the bathroom. But at twenty-two she fights against it, raises her chin and defiantly looks her mother in the eye as she dares her to say something about her choice to enjoy such decadent dessert.

"Your home is beautiful, Blair," Eleanor says as her eyes dart about the kitchen. The older woman had slipped away from the tour, followed her daughter into the kitchen in the search of a private moment between mother and daughter. Most of their interactions these days are conducted over the phone, over email and always come across as between employer and employee.

Eleanor's sharp eyes soften and a smile spreads across her face when she looks at her daughter. Her beautiful, amazing daughter glows and radiates even in the simplest of settings, even with the stain of frosting on her finger.

"You look lovely tonight."

"Thank you for saying that," Blair manages to sputter out as the feelings of surprise subside. She subconsciously slides her hand across her belly, across the dress she had spent hours picking out just for this occasion.

"I've never seen you look as beautiful as you do tonight," Eleanor adds softly. "Or so happy."

"It's Chuck –"

Blair begins to offer, begins to credit where credit is due. Her husband makes her the happiest she has ever been, makes her feel loved and adored even in those moments where she feels scared or self-doubt rears its ugly head.

"No," Eleanor corrects immediately. And then she pauses for a moment because there is some grain of truth in Blair's words. Her daughter's second wedding had felt like everything falling into place, even with the concern that Chuck or Blair or both of them could go to jail, with the fear that this would not work.

"At least, not completely," she adds softly in recognition that Chuck has always been a key component to her daughter's happiness. But there are other aspects that make her daughter happy, that make her daughter glow as she stands before her mother. "You've become the powerful woman I always knew you could be. Far more powerful than me. And it shows."

Blair swallows back the tears, swallows back the emotions bubbling to the surface as she and Eleanor embrace. The addition to her frame makes the hug slightly awkward, but both women revel in the moment. Eleanor turns her head ever so slightly, brushes her lips against the cheek of her only child before whispering in Blair's ear.

"I am so proud of you, Blair."

* * *

Their guests have departed for the evening – Cyrus and Eleanor to their penthouse on Park Avenue, Harold and Roman to the airport to take a private plane back to Paris. The quickness of Daddy and Roman's visit had originally been a source of disappointment for Blair, but disappointment has melted into gratitude for her as the urge for right here and right now takes over.

She finds him in the kitchen, finds him moving a slice of the half-eaten cake from the platter to a small plate. His finger swipes across the base of the cake, trails the line she left behind nearly two hours ago, and gathers a large dollop of icing for him to bring to his lips. His tongue darts out in eager anticipation of the sweetness about to be his.

No longer able to stand it, no longer able to wait, she nearly flies across the kitchen. The space between him and the counter is far too tight for her to fit. Yet she somehow manages to make room as she grabs his head, pulls him towards her, and hungrily captures his lips with her own.

"It's been six hours," she gasps when their lips detach for a moment. She sounds desperate and needy as her hands slide down his backside, slide around to fumble with his belt. She can barely last three hours these days let alone the multiple continuous hours required for entertaining her father, mother, Cyrus, and Roman.

Their hands roam each other's bodies in an urgent demand; their fingers pressing and searching for warmth, for heat, for access. His hands slide up her back, fingers fisting in her hair as he tries to find the zipper of her godforsaken dress. She's faster, quicker, and manages to pull on the lapels of his jacket until he has no choice but to let her go and help remove the article of clothing.

The coat falls to the floor without a second look, without concern that one of the sleeves has fallen into Monkey's half-empty water bowl. Instead, he focuses on pulling up her dress and yanking at the garter belt holding up her stockings as her hands move to his neck, as his face buries into her neck.

Her garter belt snaps, tearing the fabric in the process. But neither of them cares as she pulls down the zipper of his pants, slips her hand inside to rake her nails across his rigid length. Or as his long fingers slip under the lacy band of her La Perlas, press against and caress the slick, hot folds beneath.

The spark between them ignites into a hot inferno, leaves them aching and burning with urgent need. His fingers stroke slowly as her fingers slide deliberately. The same strum of desire courses through their veins; beats within their ears so loudly they cannot hear or think about anything other than release.

He slips his fingers inside her, parts and opens her so that her breath catches on a strangled gasp. She slides against the counter, tries to move closer to him when something stops her, when something makes her realize the height of the counter, the angle of their bodies will make this impossible.

"Bedroom," she growls.

He rejects her demand by capturing her lips, deepening the kiss until the flames roar. There is no way he can move now, not when her palm rubs against him so and when her heat clinches around one finger and then another so tightly.

Touch. Hot. Stroke. Wet. Rock. Hard. Press. Slick. Contract. Cling.

She feels the heat rise with her; catches her in its grip and sweeps her away until she shatters and falls from the peak with a soft cry. He burns for just a moment longer, follows her with a guttural groan and the slump of his body against hers.

Consciousness returned in fits and starts, in trickles of awareness. His hot breath blows against the skin of her neck, comes out in a harsh pant as he tries to catch his breath and steady the beating of his heart. Her fingers run through his hair; her nails scratch against his scalp.

Chuck lifts his hand, feels the crumbs and frosting fall from his fingers back to the plate where he had mashed his hand down in his haste. His other fingers are sticky and slick from sampling his favorite kind of dessert; slide out from between her thighs in a slow, teasing trail. She gasps in his ear, still sensitive to even the slightest touch.

He is going to need a shower after this, and the kitchen counter is going to need a thorough cleaning. Blair will want to clean up tonight before Dorota arrives in the morning, before any meal they consume can be prepared on this surface. But he will entice her to take a shower with him instead; will entice her to clean each other first before wiping down the counter.

He shifts and slides away from her, leaves her neck with a parting kiss and forces her arms to slide from around his neck to the counter to help support her weight. Blair watches him with hooded eyes, watches him reach for the blue dish towel to wipe away the mess on his hand. She stops him, grabs his hand and brings his fingers to her lips. Her tongue darts out to taste the cake and icing. Her lips wraps around his digits and slide back off in a tantalizing way.

"Blair," Chuck groans. She looks breathtaking – lips swollen, dress hiked up above her hips, legs parted just for him, and a body swelling with evidence of their hunger and desire and love for one another.

"Your son likes cake almost as much as you, Chuck."


	6. June 15-16, 2013

**Author's Note:** And thus we have reached the halfway point! Just a heads up that my schoolwork will be picking up over the next few weeks. I hope to stick to my updating schedule as planned, but things don't always go as planned during finals season. Thank you all so much for your support with this story! (Rating: K+)

* * *

_June 15, 2013 - June 16, 2013_

He pushes himself away from the counter, moves off to the side so the attendant can assist someone else while he waits. The line behind him is long, snaking down the aisle in a pattern that ebbs and flows with each exasperated sigh, with each man or woman in uniform peeking around the person in front of them to gauge how much longer they will have to wait. This is just one errand of many, one more stop before they can bid their employers goodnight and hightail it back to the outer boroughs to spend precious hours with their own children, with their own families.

The only one in the store in such an expensive, well-cut suit, he stands out as the anomaly in this environment. Eyes follow him suspiciously as he turns away, as he turns his attention to the spinning rack located next to the register. He reaches out, twirls the rack until it moves from last minute impulse buys to last minute reminders of the celebration occurring tomorrow.

The cards range from bright blue to dark green, from cartoon pictures of fishing trips to detailed drawings of golf courses. Those scenes and their sentiments written using a range of titles are foreign to him. Words and phrases that never applied to his life when he was a child or a teenager or a young adult because there was nothing celebratory about having blue chip stocks or center ice tickets or best efforts thrown back into your face.

He reaches out, moves to spin the rack once more when the paper of the card at waist level snags his finger and slices. He pulls away as though he has been bitten or burnt, looks at the small line of blood spreading across the pad of his index finger before turning his gaze to locate the culprit.

This one – the one with the white cardstock and a drop of red staining the top corner – is identified for a different kind of person entirely, a kind of person he once envied from near and afar. He extends his uninjured pointer finger with the idea of picking up the card and reading its contents when a voice from behind calls out his name, forcing him to turn away and return to the counter.

"The pharmacist recommends this product for your wife," the assistant informs him as she slides the generic, over the counter medication towards him. She picks up the forms she has set on the counter, staples them to white bag as she asks for confirmation of his wife's birthday. "And here is her prescription. Do you have any questions for the pharmacist about the application of the medicine?"

He replies negatively, pulls out his wallet, and slides one of his many credit cards across the counter for the attendant to use as payment. She runs it through the machine and hands him back his card and his receipt. He deposits both into his wallet as she moves the purchases into a nondescript, brown paper bag for him.

"Thank you," he says as he grabs ahold of the bag and steps away from the counter. The assistant calls for the next person in line and the line breaks, creating just a large enough gap for him to duck through the line of impatient people and make his way out onto the street.

He walks one block southwest before turning right and walking a block and half west towards the Park and past the townhouses as the lights of the city burn bright against the darkened sky. He reaches his own home, unlocks the front door, and is met with a blast of cold air when he opens it. He shuts and locks the door behind him, takes the stairs in a quicker pace than normal as he moves from the first floor to the fifth floor, moves from the foyer of his home to the master bedroom.

He takes a brief stop on the second floor, scratches the waiting dog with a wagging tail behind the ears in greeting. He bids his dog goodnight and sends him off to spend the night on the dog bed by the three French doors where the beloved mutt can play guard dog to his heart's content. And then he continues with his journey, continues up the circulating staircase until he reaches the fifth floor.

The white paneled door is shut, shut against the noise and the possible intrusion of a well-behaved yet eager dog. He pushes it open as quietly as he possibly can, moves into the silent sanctum, and sighs when he sees her curled up on the far corner of the bed. He sighs not over the breech of territory because it is neither his side nor her side, but because he shall have to wake her up in order to complete this errand.

He saunters across the room, gently sinks down onto the bed next to her. Features relaxed; chest expanding and contracting in a steady rhythm. He curls his fingers around her shoulder, leans down, and places a gentle kiss against her forehead. Her eyelashes flutter awake as he pulls away, as she is snatched away from her slumber.

"I have your medicine," he informs her as she looks at him with drowsy features. "Do you want to take it now?"

She shakes her head against the pillow, settles deeper into the softness of the mattress that surrounds and supports her frame. Her eyes flutter close, flutter open again as she tries to fight her exhaustion and pay attention to him.

"Sleep," he instructs in a low voice as he runs the back of his hand across the warm skin of her cheek. The soothing gesture lulls her back to sleep, and she slips back into her dreams after only a moment.

His eyes sweep to the alarm clock on the nightstand, to the red numbers reading eight eighteen. With hours to go before he normally goes to bed, before he would even begin to feel tired, he contemplates what to do in the interim when all he really wants to do is join his wife.

He runs a hand through his hair, runs a hand down the length of his face as gazes out over their bedroom. His eyes land on the book placed on the nightstand beside his wife's head. He snatches his copy of Hemingway's classic novel, tucks it under his arm before moving off the bed towards their shared, en suite bathroom. He drops the package in his hand on the counter, leaves the medication for her to use when she awakens, and heads back downstairs to relax on the couch and read until he too is ready to sleep.

He wakes slowly, fights the sluggishness of only four hours of sleep. The ebb of the mattress, the bouncing return of the springs as the other occupant shifts and moves about drags him into consciousness. He stayed up later than he intended, flipped page after page until he reached the end, and then he stumbled into bed beside her. Exhausted and weary, he moved to spoon his body about her smaller frame, shifted away when she groaned unappreciatively at his touch before drifting off into oblivion as close to her as she can stand.

Now, he fights the drowsiness with his want and need to make sure she is alright because he hoovers, because he worries. His mother died and lived and died once more with a backstabbing scheme, and now he hoovers and worries about her. She hates it, loves it even as she tells him to stop it.

His eyes open to the darkness of a day where the sun has yet to rise. Open only to close at the harsh, bright light cast about the room from the opening and closing of the bathroom door. He groans unhappily as he rolls from his stomach to his back, groans again as he pushes himself up into a seated position.

The sheet slips down his chest, puddles about his waist, and he pinches the bridge of his nose between his fingers with a yawn. The light on the nightstand beside him is turned on with a flick of his wrist, casting a soft glow onto the blue walls and gray bed coverings. He listens to the sounds of water running, to the interruptions of the quiet evening and lets out yet another yawn as the door to the bathroom is opened once more.

"Hi," he greets softly. She startles at the sound of his voice, jerks ever so slightly in the doorframe before flicking off the light and padding across the floor towards his side – _her side? their side?_ – of the bed.

"Did I wake you?" She asks out of concern. Yet she smiles when he tells her that she did because tf she is going to be waking up at all hours of the night now, he might as well too. It takes two to tango, after all.

He drops his leg over the edge of the bed, creates a space for her to slide in and settle herself between the long 'V' created by his legs. She huffs at the effort as she climbs into bed, sighs contently as she settles herself with her back pressed to his chest.

"How's the heartburn?" He asks gently, sincerely as he drops his lips to her neck. His breath – hot and heavy and stale – ghosts across her already warmed skin. "Did you take your medicine?"

She hums her confirmation that the heartburn has abated, that the pain has dissipated. At least, for now, she adds as she shifts her body against his. He reaches a hand up from his side, sweeps her hair from her neck to one side to afford him better access.

"And what about your hemorro—"

"Don't you dare," she hisses out harshly, interrupting and cutting off his line of questioning. His features pull into a vexing frown, and he drops his forehead to press against the back of her head in a frustrated sigh.

"Blair," he begins testily. She turns her head, shifts her body away from him as she peers at him with a questioning glare.

"You bought the medicine for my – _condition_ – yourself, right?" She asks in a low, worried voice, dropping her voice even lower at her chosen word for her current ailment. "You didn't send Arthur or Dorota?"

"Yes, dear," he assures her with a teasing tone, wrapping his fingers about her hips and dragging her body back against his. "Too bad Gossip Girl is dead. I'm sure Humphrey would have loved to post all about Queen B's condition. I know many who would have killed in high school to have this kind of blackmail on you."

"You're a Basshole," she huffs indignantly. "And I hate you."

"No, you don't," he replies as his fingers slide across the silk covering her form and fondle one of the buttons forming a line down the front of her body.

"How can you be so sure?" She questions haughtily.

"Because Chuck Bass doesn't stand in line at the pharmacy for anyone," he replies knowingly, confidently. "And because Blair Waldorf-Bass wouldn't tell anyone but the one she loves about her hemor—"

"Chuck," she snaps in a warning tone.

He chuckles and smirks as he presses his lips in tender affection to the nape of her neck. His nimble fingers pop open one of the buttons on her shirt, slide between the puckered fabrics to stroke the taunt skin of her belly.

"Can't sleep?"

"No," she replies, annoyed and exhausted. "Your son keeps kicking me."

"Hmm," he murmurs. His fingers slip out from her shirt, move to flick open more of the buttons. He pauses, tugs at the fabric. "Isn't this mine?"

"No," she rebukes without missing a beat. He raises an eyebrow silently in question even though she cannot see him as he moves to unbutton the silk top further.

"Yes," she whispers softly. "My lingerie no longer fits."

He moves the hand resting against his thigh to gather her fingers, to lift them to his lips for a tender kiss. He murmurs something about it looking better on her. Murmurs something she does not quite believe that she cannot hear as she gasps, grimaces at the resounding kick to her side.

Chuck makes quick work of the rest of her buttons, stops just below her breasts when her hand twitches upward to try and stop him. He peels apart the fabric and exposes her pale skin to the soft glow of the light and eyes accustomed to the darkened conditions of the room.

"Where's he kicking?" Chuck hums his question in her ear and watches as her fingers skim across her exposed skin. She points to the spot against her right ribs and then to the left side of the under swell of her belly. "Is he doing the splits in there?"

"Flips," she replies as his hand moves to rest beside hers.

Her fingers move to grasp his, move to entwine them together. She slides his hand to the right side of her body and holds it there until the baby kicks. And then she skates his hand across her expanse to press it the underside of her rounded frame. Another firm kick meets his palm.

"If I didn't know any better, I'd think this baby wasn't yours," she teases. "He's far too athletic to be the son of Chuck Bass."

"I'll show you athletic," he growls darkly in her ear as he thrusts his hips upward and presses himself against her backside. She groans, but it is a bad groan – the kind that causes him the freeze and panic.

"It's okay," she says softly, squeezing his hand and trying to placate him. "It just – I'm sensitive down there right now."

"You've always been sensitive," he replies with a smarmy smirk, utilizing a defense mechanism to mask his deeply felt concern. He shifts against her, moves his body as he reaches to pull open the drawer to the nightstand beside their bed.

"You better not be grabbing lube," she says in warning. "I'm not in the mood tonight."

He says nothing, continues to dig through the drawer until he finds what he is looking for. He moves again, moves back to rest against the pillows and the headboard and holds the bottle out to her for her approval. She glances at the offering in his hand and smiles when she sees the words written across the bottle.

"I'd thought I rub this in," he offers. "See if I can get him to calm down."

"Can you get the cocoa butter in the bathroom and use that instead? The book says it works best on preventing stretch marks."

He acquiesces to her vanity and slides out of the bed behind her with the intention of using the cocoa butter rather than the lotion he originally suggested. He is careful to arrange the pillows to help support her in his absence, careful to leave her as comfortable as he possibly can. In and out of the bathroom in a flash, in and out only to pause and watch the way she smiles blissfully with eyes closed, pause and drink in the sight of her blossoming form.

"What?"

"You're beautiful."

The corners of her mouth quirk to formulate a response, but she stops herself because she knows she will lose this argument with him. He saunters across the room as he unscrews the lid of the container. Placing the container of cocoa butter and lid on the nightstand, he stops to help her sit up so he can slide in behind her. Once they are both settled in bed, once her back is pressed against his chest and her head is resting against his left shoulder, he dips his fingers into the concoction, drags a portion out, and spreads it gingerly across her exposed, rounded form.

For a long, quiet moment, there are no words spoken between them. The only sounds are of the matching inhale and exhale of air in unison, of his skillful fingers drawling soothing circles on the spots their son has chosen to abuse. The baby inside her begins to calm in the ferocity of his kicks and eventually he settles into a content slumber under his daddy's hands.

"Better?"

"Mm hmm," Blair murmurs softly in reply. Her head lolls against his chest with a relaxed, sleepy sigh. He presses another tender kiss against her clothed shoulder, smiles over the way her whole body has relaxed against his. Another long, quiet moment passes before Blair can bring herself to speak.

"I bought a present for you," she informs him.

He quirks an eyebrow in question, shifts his head to peer down at her as she twists her head to look up at him. Their eyes connect, hold for a moment as unspoken words past between them. She reaches toward her pillow, slips her hand under her chosen hiding place, and pulls out a crisp, white envelope. She holds up the envelope to him, yanks it away when a wave of self-doubt washes over her.

"Blair," he says in a gentle tone meant to coax her into handing over her present. She holds it out to him again; eyes widening as he takes it from her hands and runs his fingers across the name written on the envelope in perfect cursive.

He flips the envelope over, rests the present on her belly as he begins to run his nail under the flap of the envelope. She places her hand over his, forcing him to still in his movements for just a moment.

"It's—"

She opens her mouth, begins to explain her thought process when he shakes off her hand and pulls out the card. The air leaves him as his eyes land on the same design, the same words, the same card he saw in pharmacy earlier in the night. He reaches out, traces the letters written on the front of the white card before frantically flipping open the card. He can feel his heart seize when he reads the words written on the inside flap of the card, when he sees the photograph glued in the middle.

_I can't wait to meet you, Daddy!_

He stares at the photograph, stares at the image of his son he has never seen before. The baby's features are so well-defined, so obvious to even the untrained eye. Tiny lips forming a small mouth, eyes shut, and the bridge of a nose between.

"He's so –"

"Beautiful," she fills in with a confident smile. He shakes his head, rejects her chosen adjective because it is all wrong to describe the vision in front of him.

"He's perfect," he corrects. Her smile widens, and she straightens her body so she can place a kiss against the underside of his jaw. She pulls away, smiles further at the way his eyes are so fixated on the card she purchased for him whilst picking out cards for her own fathers.

"Happy Father's Day, Chuck."


	7. July 1–2, 2013

**Author's Note:** The first – and last time – I visited Paris was eight years ago. Please forgive me if Google has failed me.

* * *

_July 1 – July 2, 2013_

The Golden Triangle, the area of Paris bounded by the Avenues des Champes-Élysées, George V, and Montaigne is the area de jour and yet she finds herself shopping on the wrong side the Right Bank. The brunette fingers the dress on the headless mannequin, drops the cheap fabric in disgust. She moves about the crowded shop, snaps at the women who has the misfortune of accidentally bumping into her.

"Oh my gosh!" The blonde gushes as she spies the onesie hanging from the rack. She holds it up to her chest, tries to get the attention of her companion. "B, look!"

Blair wrinkles her nose at the garment being offered to her. No way is she going to buy an outfit made out of cheap fabric and covered in tiny, dancing bears. She has no qualms telling Serena that as she snatches the onesie out of Serena's hands and hangs the offending garment back on the rolling rack before heading out of the shop.

"But it's so cute," Serena protests as she follows Blair out of the store with a forlorn look at the tiny bears. She falls in step with the brunette, loops her arm with Blair's as they stroll down the avenue.

"You've been spending too much time in Brooklyn," Blair says as she gestures to the chain shops and restaurants lining the avenue. "This place – I don't even know where we are. Are you sure we're still in Paris?"

"You realize that your child will spit-up and spill on their clothes, right?" Serena questions as Blair pauses on the curb and tries to flag down a taxi to return to the side of Paris where Blair Waldorf-Bass belongs. "Dan says he would have to change Milo's clothes at least three or four times a day because of spit-up."

"Milo is the spawn of Whoregina," Blair replies dismissively. "My child will know better than to stain their attire."

A silver cab pulls up alongside the curb, alongside the married woman and her best friend. The brunette opens the door, holds it open for her best friend to enter first not out of courtesy but because Blair Waldorf – or, more accurately pregnant Blair Waldorf – does not slide. Serena slides across the seat with a roll of her eyes careful not to squash her shopping bags. She catches the bags Blair hands to her, watches cautiously as Blair sinks into the seat next to her.

When Blair is safely seated, when the cab pulls away from the curb, Serena pulls out her phone and scrolls through the emails and text messages in her inbox. Her position as a production assistant for the film adaptation of _Inside_ is set to begin at the end of the month, but already work is piling up and intruding upon her last vacation, her last hurrah in Paris with her best friend before the brunette is grounded from flying and becomes a mother, before the blonde is sent scurrying around filming sets and becomes an insider to the film industry.

Serena taps out quick replies to the most urgent emails before sending a text to Dan stating the she and Blair are having a lovely time and she hopes he has made some progress on his next novel. She smiles at Blair's scoffs of disapproval as the brunette scrolls through her own emails, laughs when she spies a wide grin spread across Blair's face as she reads a text message. Serena leans over the bags, tries to situate herself for a better view so she can confirm her suspicions as to who the sender might be.

"Do you mind?" Blair huffs out in frustration as she pulls the phone to her chest and blocks the blonde's view. Serena laughs again and reaches over to tip the phone back into her view, but Blair shifts away from her and glares.

"Just because your boyfriend is Gossip Girl doesn't mean you need to be so nosy yourself," Blair reminds her as she pockets the phone back her purse without sending a reply. Serena protests the present tense of Dan's occupation in Blair's sentence before wagering a guess as to who the sender might be and asking about their estimated time of arrival.

"Tomorrow morning," Blair replies as she gazes out the window and watches the scenery morph into the Paris she knows and loves. She lets out a sigh of relief, a sigh of happiness. "He's taking the train to Paris since you need the jet this afternoon to get back to New York in time for Rufus' gallery showing."

Serena nods her head, offers a few words of thanks to her sister-in-law for saving her from flying commercial back to Manhattan.

"Of course," Blair replies before wrinkling her nose in contempt at the alliterative. "You may be dating a Humphrey, but I'm not about to allow my best friend to set next to the proletariat for eight hours."

"Thanks," Serena says. There is a twinge of annoyance in her voice over the way Blair continually puts down Dan, especially given the two used to be romantically involved. But she allows the comment to slide as the taxi stops in front of Drouant once again. Blair's preference for the place has increased ten-fold since her pregnancy, and the brunette has not risen above using her unborn child as the tiebreaker in the decision of where to eat lunch.

Blair heaves herself out of the car, heads straight towards the entrance of the restaurant as Serena gathers her bags. The blonde has become accustomed to such abandonment, and she enters the restaurant expecting to be shown their table alone as the expectant mother searches out the nearest bathroom.

So she is surprised to find Blair standing just inside the doorway, surprised to see that she has not disappeared and left Serena to inquire about their reservation in her poor, heavily accented French. She is about to ask Blair what is wrong, about to question her best friend's frozen appearance when she hears a familiar voice rising above all others in the restaurant.

Her eyes sweep over the crowd, sweep only to settle on the man seated in the middle of the dining room. She recognizes him immediately, and her eyes darken in anger at his intrusion into their lives, at the memories of what he did and who he pretended to be. Serena turns on her heels, sets her bags down on the ground to free up her hands, and reaches out to tenderly touch Blair's elbow.

"B, let's go. We can go to that café that makes those croissants you love or—"

"Why?" Blair interrupts. She throws her best friend a questioning look, tries to shake off her concern as she slides her hand across her stomach. "I married a man who loves me, who married me because he wanted to be with me and not because he saw me as his ticket to status or a crown. Why should I be required to avoid the one who didn't?"

"Madame Bass," the maître d' interrupts. "Your table."

"Merci," Blair replies. She follows after him with a confident air, walks right past Louis and his friends without a word, and allows her ring and her body to do all the talking for her.

The maître d' assists her with her chair, pulls out the other one for Serena before offering to hold her packages for her during the course of her meal. Serena barely has a moment to open her menu, to try and translate the specials from French to English when her concentration is interrupted by the scrape of chairs against the floor.

She turns her gaze from her menu to watch Louis button his suit coat, watch him turn away and walk towards the exit. But not before she sees him look at the ring on Blair's finger, sees him appraise the way her body has blossomed and now glows with happiness, and sees him see all that he threw away.

"After lunch," Blair says without looking up from her menu, without even bothering to watch Louis' retreating form. "We should stop at Pierre Hermé and purchase macaroons for Chuck."

"If you don't eat them all first."

"That was the baby's fault, Serena. I can't help it if he gets hungry."

* * *

He scowls as yet another dirty and scuffed bag slams into his shoulder, as yet another person boarding this train to Paris hits him without apology. The overnight trip from Prague to Karlsruhe was manageable enough given he spent in a private sleeper compartment, but tickets from Karlsruhe to Paris were only available in second class and he will spend the next three hours sitting amongst the proletariat. He should have hired a car or flown commercial or, better yet, taken his own plane rather than allow his stepsister and his wife to commandeer it.

He shifts away from the aisle, shifts to grab the book he brought with him from inside his leather briefcase. His hand pauses over the pocket where he tucked away his phone, pauses when he sees the red flashing light informing him that he missed a call. He pulls the phone out, pushes the button to illuminate the screen, and smiles when he sees his wife's name on the screen. The text message apologies for forcing him to take the train and promises to make it up to him later. He quickly taps back a message saying that she better, saying that seven forty in the morning is far too early to be changing trains in Germany, saying that he loves her and will see her in Paris in a few short hours.

"Chuck?"

His name is a question spoken in an accented whisper, spoken with a twinge of surprise and confusion for the man she knows would never been seen where he is sitting now. He shifts his gaze from his phone to the blonde woman in the aisle prepared to dismiss her attention, to dismiss her advances but he falters when he sees her face, when his brain connects her voice to her face to a memory of years ago.

"Eva," he breathes out in greeting, breathes out in surprise. The woman nods her head slowly almost as if she is surprised he remembers her. She once told him not to forget him, once asked him not to, but she had left him in New York knowing his world revolved around a different axis, around a center that was not and never would be her.

Chuck considers moving to his feet, considers stand up in the aisle and offering her perfunctory kisses against her cheeks in greeting. And then his eyes slide down Eva's form, watch the way she grips and shifts the strap of the bag hanging across her chest in nervous movements, and then his actions are decided for him.

"Congratulations," he replies with a gesture towards the hand gripping the strap, towards the thin band across her ring finger. Her eyes drop down to where he is pointing, and happiness glints within them as that newlywed glow spreads across her whole body at the reminder of why she is in Karlsruhe, why she is headed to Paris.

She lifts her eyes in preparation of thanking him, of informing him that she and Jean-Luc are headed back to Paris from their honeymoon when her gaze lands on the band across his ring finger. A funny look crosses her face; the combination of a knowing smile and quizzical hesitation.

"You are married?"

She may not have pursued news of him, may have severed ties from the charity funded in her name following their breakup, and may have done everything she could to distance herself from him and his world, but she had figured that news of his marriage would have reached her long before a run in on a train in Germany.

"Yes," he replies immediately. And then he fills in the information she already knows because she had been there, had stood in the middle and felt the pull between them even as they both denied it. "To Blair."

"Of course," Eva replies knowingly, coldly. And even that cannot remove the look on his face, cannot remove the joy he feels when he introduces Blair as his wife. "The pull between you two would have made anything else impossible."

"If two people are meant to be together, eventually they will find their way back," he offers softly.

The words are not meant to be cold or calculated, but slip through his lips as a gentle yet undeniable truth. And Eva finds herself nodding in agreement because the words are just as true for her and Jean-Luc as they are from him and Blair. One summer in Paris at the age of fifteen with her first love ended in heartache and yet became one fall in Paris at the age of twenty, became what will be a lifetime of togetherness.

"Eva?"

She turns at the sound of her name, smiles brightly when she spies her husband making his way down the aisle towards her. He waves at her, tells her that he found two empty seats together in another section of the train.

"Goodbye, Eva," Chuck says before she can excuse herself, before she can even turn her attention back to him. She adjusts the strap of her bag, begins to turn on the balls of her feet, and offers him her own farewell.

"Goodbye, Chuck."

Her parting gaze to Chuck is filled with happiness, is filled with the knowledge that Blair may be a liar but he ended up with the person who shares the other half of his soul just as she ended up with the one who completes her.

* * *

He hands his bags off to the waiting driver in a complicated shuffle as she continues to press kisses to his jawline, continues to act as though they have been separated for a month rather than an extended weekend. When his bags are out of his hands, when he is free to slide them around her waist, he pulls her against him as close as possible and kisses her soundly, tenderly on the lips.

Short, sweet, repetitious, punctuated with whispers of three words, eight letters at each moment they break apart. His fingers roam across her back just as hers trail across his neck, stroke the soft skin of his freshly shaven cheek, and he kisses her deeply, hungrily until she needs to break their kiss to catch her breath, until he has no choice but let her go.

"I missed you," she whispers as her nose nuzzles against his, as she presses a soft kiss against the corner of his lips. "The baby missed you."

"Did he?" His hands move from her back, move to touch the rounded portion of her frame through the draped fabric of her dress. He smiles against her cheek when she confirms her declaration, when she informs him that the baby grows restless at night when he is not around to soothe and coax him back to sleep. "How was your time with Serena?"

"Remind me to reeducate her on the finer points of fashion when we get back to New York. For some reason, she thought it was acceptable to buy clothes for the baby at H and M."

He chuckles lightly, kisses her against the lips once more before releasing her to instruct the driver to place his briefcase in the back of the car rather thank the trunk. Her eyes sweep across the cityscape, sweep to take in the sight of the train station where she once almost lost him forever. And then her gaze falls on the blonde waiting near the taxi stand and her eyes narrow as her brain pulls together a narrative of explanation.

"Don't," he hisses in her ear as he pulls her back into his embrace, as he tries to soothe away the worry creeping over her face. He rubs a soothing circle on Blair's hip and presses a kiss against her temple as he speaks. "I love you more than anything. I'm not going to risk losing you or the baby. Nothing else, no one else matters as much as you and our son matter to me."

"I know," she breathes out softly. She turns her head, turns away from those thoughts to concentrate on the fact in front of her. Buying into other people's fiction lead her nowhere, and she is not about go down that path again. "Serena and I saw Louis."

"What?" Chuck asks. His voice sputters in surprise, sputters in wonder as to if she would have told him had she not seen Eva. And then Blair shakes her head, tries to shake away his worry in the process.

"It doesn't matter. Nothing matters but the 'us' that includes you, me, and our baby. I've never been happier than I have been since I married you, and no one is better for me than you. I love you, Chuck."

She presses a kiss against his lips, smiles beautifully when she flounces off towards the car. The driver springs into action and opens the back door for her. It takes Chuck less than a moment to follow after her, to press his hand against the small of her back and help ease her into the car

"To Drouant," she tells the driver before turning her attention back to her husband as he assists her "The baby is famished."

He slams the door when she is safely inside, hurries around to the other side of the car in order to join her, and never once looks behind him to try and find the blonde waiting for a taxi.


	8. August 23, 2013

**Author's Note:** I have fallen behind on answering reviews and for that I apologize. You all have been so wonderful and supportive so please accept my blanket thank you.

* * *

_August 23, 2013_

"I should have known you wouldn't understand a simple invitation," Blair says in derision. "It's called the White Party for a reason, Humphrey."

Dan looks up from the lawn chair he is perched on, raises a hand to block the glaring August sun from his eyes. He has become accustomed to the way her eyes mentally pick you apart, to the way her words tear at every shred of dignity you may possess. He would be lying, however, if he said that he wasn't still affected, wasn't still yearning for some part of her approval.

"Hello to you, too, Blair."

"Did you have an accident at the cleaners?" Blair questions as she fingers the collar of Dan's blue, buttoned up shirt. She drops the fabric, grimaces at the coarseness of the cheap, overly starched shirt. "You live on the Upper East Side, Humphrey. Stop shopping at the Gap."

Dan lets her criticism roll of his shoulders as he sweeps his eyes across her body. The white dress – designer unknown to him – clings to the curves of her body. New curves that cause every eye in the room turn her way until she turns around, turns to the side or until the murderous glare of her husband connects with the wandering eye.

The sunlight catches the diamond on her finger and makes it sparkle so brilliantly that he is blinded for a moment. He shifts in his seat, moves his gaze from the white headband holding back her curls and serving as her crown to the shoes on her dainty feet.

"You're one to talk," Dan deadpans in response. "I'm not sure those shoes would count as white, either."

Blair twists her body, strains to see her feet over her burgeoning belly and confirm that her chosen footwear are in fact white and do in fact match. Serena assisted her in putting on her shoes this afternoon, and Blair will kill the blonde if –

Dan lets out a snort of laughter. His smile makes it obvious that he is taking immense enjoyment out of her distress, out of her ungraceful movements. Blair's eyes narrow into a harsh glare and her fingers tighten around the glass of water she is holding until her knuckles turn the same shade as her outfit.

"You're a jerk," Blair hisses. She turns on her heels, begins to stalk away and rejoin the rest of the party when Dan calls after her. She turns around, looks at Dan with expectant eyes as she awaits her apology.

"Stay right there," Dan instructs, gesturing towards the spot near the pool where Blair has stopped to listen to him. He drops the hand shielding the sun from his eyes and curls it around the edge of the lounge as he prepares to enjoy summer in the Hamptons. "You block out the sun."

Her eyes narrow further before she stalks towards Dan with a murderous glare. She gathers a fistful of his hair, jerks his head with a forceful tug so their eyes meet. His eyes grow wide at the pain, and he reaches up to bat away her hand.

And then for good measure, Blair kicks Dan square in the shin and smirks as his mouth drops open in an outburst of pain. She drops her fistful of his hair, pats him placating on the head, and then saunters – or waddles, to be more accurate – off in the direction from which she originally came.

Dan rubs his leg to try and sooth away the pain before lying back against the cushioned lounge. He closes his eyes, feels the heat of the sun bearing down him. The serenity of an afternoon in the Hamptons lulls him into complacency, lulls him to a place where he stops watching his back and starts concentrating on his tan. A grave error he regrets immediately when cold, icy drinks are splashed onto his face.

He opens his eyes at the impact, opens his eyes to find Blair's former high school minions standing over him with overturned glasses in hand. The women offer him fake, singsong apologies before walking away with twittering comments about how far Serena van der Woodsen has fallen to end up with a man who wears tan Dockers and a blue shirt from the Gap to the White Party.

Dan wicks away most of the moisture on his face with his palms, moves to stand and locate a towel when his eyes fall on the two brunettes standing together and watching him. Chuck's arm is wrapped about Blair's waist, and he pulls her even closer to him as he dips his head and whispers in her ear. She smiles, laughs at either her husband's comment or at Dan's expense or, more likely, both before raising her glass of water in a toast to herself.

"I see you can still whip your minions into action," Chuck says with an admiring tone as Blair raises the glass to her lips and takes a sip of water. She smiles against the stemware at his comment, at the way Dan is stalking across the lush, green lawn in search of a way to clean up her retribution and leaving a trail of mixed drinks in his wake.

"I'm thirty-eight weeks pregnant," Blair reminds him sharply. Despite the violent manner in which she flicks the fan in her hand, the still air around her continues to hug her body in its oppressive arms. "I cannot be expected to carry out all the dirty work."

Chuck does not reply, just silently says thank you for the fact that she has finally acquiesced to some of his demands that she take it easy. Coming to the Hamptons for August and staying until the White Party had been an all-out fight between the two of them, and he begrudgingly allowed them to attend once she agreed to his conditions. She sighs unhappily, rubs her aching back with her free hand, and attracts the attention of her husband.

"Are you okay?" Chuck questions her softly. His eyes widen as a current of panic passes through him, as his hand twitches towards the pocket holding his cellphone. Arthur is on standby – has been since Valentine's Day – and the driver is waiting in the limo out front, waiting for Chuck's anxious call demanding a ride to the hospital.

"It's hot," she whines as she shifts uncomfortably.

Blair looks past her husband's concerned features towards the pool, towards the cool blue water calling her name. Chuck looks over his shoulder, looks towards the object of her fixation, and then he looks back at her, asks her if she would like to go for a swim in a low, suggestive voice whispered in her ear.

She jerks away at his suggestion, answers him with a look of disdain as she explains there is no way she could ever been induced to slip into her bathing suit and wade into the pool in front of so many people in her condition. He smirks at her response, smirks because her eyes are not matching her mouth, and he moves to snatch her fan from her hand, moves to help cool her down as a plan formulates in his mind.

* * *

She clutches the towel to her chest and peers around open French doors into the darkness creeping over the sky with the setting sun. She strains around the corner even further and tries to spy any type of movement when fingers brush against her backside. Blair jerks, yelps in surprise and casts a furtive glance towards the man who dares to touch her.

"Chuck!"

"Shh," he instructs, placing a single finger against her lips. "Do you want to attract the attention of everyone in the Hamptons?"

Blair blanches at the idea, pulls the towel tighter against her body. Her husband slides his hands up and down her naked arms reassuringly before moving his hand over the hand clutching her towel to unfurl her fingers and force her to drop it. She fights him for a moment, and his eyes soften with concern.

"You're beautiful," he promises softly.

The towel falls with a tug, falls with unfurling fingers until she stands before him clad only in a red bikini. Her maternity bathing suit makes her look and feel like a beached whale, but this old red bikini she found stuffed in her suitcase makes her feel incredibly exposed. They haven't had sex in weeks and, worse, he hasn't seen her naked in a long while.

"I've changed my mind," he informs her with eyes raking over his body as his tongue slips across his drying lips.

"Wh—what?" She sputters as self-conscious arms move to cross over her chest, move to shield herself from his gaze. He moves to block her hands, moves reflexively to stop such a powerful woman from falling back into the well-rutted part of her mind that trapped her so ruthlessly in the past.

"Uh huh," he murmurs in response. "I'd rather go skinny dipping instead."

She rolls her eyes and yet cannot help the small smile that twitches across her lips. And he uses the moment to his advantage, presses a soft kiss against her smiling lips.

"I love you," he reminds her in a solid tone, in a gentle yet forcible reminder that he cannot imagine a day that he won't love her.

"Even though I'm huge and gross and now twice the size Kate Middleton was?"

He sighs in frustration, sighs over the repetition of this argument because he knows how her mind works, knows how she picks apart every flaw - real or imaginary - and holds them up in comparison to others. Serena van der Woodsen. Nelly Yuki. Serena, again. And, now, Kate Middleton.

"You're not huge. You're not from Brooklyn so you're not gross. And who wants Kate Middleton when they could have Blair Waldorf?"

He tips her chin, tries to hold her gaze as she falls into that horrible her brain sets for itself. She closes her eyes, tries to blink back the tears she cannot explain.

"Come on," he coaxes. "You'll feel better in the pool."

She roots her feet firmly in the ground, and resists the temptation of the cool water as her eyes dart about the house. He knows what she is wondering even before she can ask the question, promises that they are alone. Serena and Dan went out with Nate for the evening, Lily and William are asleep upstairs, and the staff has been dismissed for the night.

(Save for Arthur, who is sleeping in the apartment above the garage with the ringer of his phone on maximum volume. On this, Chuck will not budge.)

His promises of solitude and a much needed cool down coaxes her outside, coaxes her to the water's edge. He wades into the pool first, and then he helps her down the steps, curls his hands about her waist to pull her into the freezing water with an impatient tug. She gasps at the coldness and then smiles blissfully when the hot summer air finally releases her from its oppressive embrace.

"Better?"

She nods her head eagerly and doesn't mind when her hair gets wet from the chlorinated water in the process. She is far too busy treading water, far too busy enjoying that weightless feeling she hasn't felt in a long while. And he watches her for a long moment, watches her in amusement with a grin on his face and love in his eyes.

Eventually, she swims – or, more accurately, doggie paddles – over to him. She slips under his arm, and his arm moves instinctively to curl around her. To press against the small of her back and aid in keeping her close. She sighs contently, presses her cheek against his shoulder as the expansion of his chest and stomach with every breath causes his belly to brush against the expansive side of her.

"Thank you for suggesting we do this."

He keeps quiet and allows the fingers tracing the darkened line bisecting her body from pubic bone to newly outed belly button to sternum to do the talking for him. Blair snakes her arms about his neck to help hold her close to him, and she gently strokes the patch of skin just below his hairline on the back of his neck. She tries to shift her body closer, feels him aid her in such an attempt until her forehead is pressed against neck and the water ebbs and flows around her.

"Can you do something for me?"

"Hmm," she hums in reply.

Her exhaustion has caught up with her in this moment. She hasn't been able to sleep well in the last few weeks, and the pillow tucked under her belly and snaked between her legs fails to be the comfort every book and website says it will be. All she wants to do fall asleep in his arms, but New York in the summer time has made this idea completely unpalatable. Even with the air conditioning on full blast, she can barely stand to be touched when they lay together in bed. Yet now with the cool water between them she feels her eyes becoming droopy and her body becoming listless in its weightlessness.

"From now until the baby is born," he says as he splays his hand across the part of her that holds their son, "can you not criticize your body?"

Her surprise over his request causes her to shift away from him, causes her to look at with an incredulous look on her face. This was not the request she expected to receive, and she presses him for an explanation with gesturing hands that cause the water to splash in an exclamation of her question.

"Because I love you," he replies solemnly. "Because I love your body. It's—"

"Warm and wet and I make those noises that you love when I—"

"No," he interrupts before she can continue.

He doesn't know whether to be angry or amused because every part of this argument comes back to how much he loves having sex with her. Which is true, but not at all the point of this argument. Because she may act like he corrupted her, like he showed her all the wonderful, amazing things her body can do, but she corrupted him too by stripping off her clothes and stripping off the cold, defensive layer around his heart.

"You, Blair Waldorf-Bass, have given me everything I have ever wanted and, at one time or another, thought I didn't need," he reminds her with words spoken lowly just for her ears. He flexes his fingers against her form, chuckles lightly when he feels a firm kick against his palm. "And your body has been a part of that – from a burlesque show at Victrola to the best sex of my life and, now, to our son. My son."

His hand moves from her belly to her cheek, to cup and stroke and reassure through it all. Her eyes flutter close at the sensation, flutter close at the weight of his words only to open at the sensation of his lips against hers. For a heartbeat after they break, his lips hover above hers and his eyes gleam from beneath long lashes.

And then she stretches forward and her lips move on his in a confident and beguiling manner. Firm and yearning for him to part his lips for her so she can slide her tongue between and find his, so pleasure can sweep them both into deeper waters. Yet he holds her off, breaks the kiss to press his lips against the nape of her neck and she lets her head roll to the side, knowing that it's his kryptonite and expecting him to give in.

"I know you're uncomfortable and that the summer makes your miserable. I would take all the discomfort away if I could," he whispers against her neck as he feathers the spot with tiny kisses. "But what your body is doing for us? For our son?"

He pauses, moves to place a few kisses against her jawline before pulling away and holding her gaze with his own. Her smile drops at the beseeching and desperate look in his eyes, at the way he holds her and loves her and never lets her go.

"Please, don't listen to the dark spot in your mind that says you aren't pretty enough," he says in a voice that sounds more and more like begging. "To me, you are perfect. You grow more beautiful and perfect every day. That's never going to change. And, no matter how you look, you will be an amazing mother to our son, and that is also never going to change."


	9. September 7, 2013

_September 7, 2013_

Her nails dig into his flesh, dig into his arms through the protective barrier of his shirt and suit coat. He tries not to flinch, tries to keep a calm face, but his brain is racing with panic because she's doubling over in pain, acting like she's being ripped from the inside out.

Dorota's watching anxiously from the other side of the bed. She works on spreading out the pink hospital gown the nurse handed out upon their arrival while Chuck works on helping Blair to breathe through the contractions and convincing her to change. But she keeps murmuring that it hurts, that she can't, and Chuck's fingers have stilled on the zipper of her dress.

"Blair," Doctor Picoult greets as she breezes into the room. The woman in the dark blue scrubs sets the chart on the rolling table, heads towards the sink to wash her hands in preparation for checking Blair's progress. "I hear we're having a baby today."

Blair nods her head meekly, whimpers as her body contorts with another contraction. The sound causes Chuck's heart to lurch, and his body follows the trajectory of her own as he tries to keep her upright through the pain. The doctor glances over her shoulder back at the couple when there is no affirmative, happy reply, and her features immediately contract into a vexing frown when she sees the looks on her patient's face and on her patient's husband's face.

She hears the telltale sound of waters breaking, hears the progression of Blair's labor from one stage to the next, and Doctor Picoult watches as the pinkish nervousness of a new father on Chuck's face becomes ashen white. She snaps into overdrive, moves across the room, and pushes aside everything in her way – the woman in a maid's uniform clutching the pink hospital gown to her chest, the rolling table upon which Blair's chart sits, and the man she has seen at every appointment holding onto his wife for dear life – in order to reach her patient.

One look at the floor, at the red liquid puddled around her patient's feet, and Doctor Picoult slams on the emergency call button above the gurney and calls out for assistance. She tips Blair backwards, helps lay her patient out on the bed as the room fills with frenzied nurses and doctors springing to action. One of the nurses sets to work cutting open Blair's dress whilst another calls ahead to the operating room, informs the surgical nurse on the other end of the line that they need an OR immediately.

Through the panicked look on their faces, through the words being thrown out that title the scariest chapter in the well-thumbed book on pregnancy packed in her hospital bag, she tries to tell the doctors and the nurses to just cut her baby out right now. Because she doesn't care if it hurts or if she has scars all over because she cannot go through this again, cannot be a mother-to-be one day and nothing the next.

And then she tries to locate her husband's face in the crowd, tries to tell him to choose the baby when she spots him with his back against the wall and his knees buckling out underneath him. She wants to call out his name, to allow one word, five letters to roll off her tongue. But her lips aren't moving and the words are being screamed in a place where no one can hear her.

The gurney is moving suddenly, being pushed rapidly out the door. Even though she twists her head against the starched, scratchy sheets of the gurney, she loses sight of him all the same. Her hand twitches against her side, twitches towards her belly in the hopes of feeling a reassuring kick, but nothing comes out as her gurney bumps into a wall in the haste to round the corner of the hallway. And the mob around her gurney, the doctors talking about blood types and forty weeks pregnant and baby in distress and profuse bleeding are all reconstructing the memories of a two-year-old nightmare in real time.

Her chest becomes unbearably tight and her breathing becomes erratic, becomes shallow and shaky as she cannot imagine going through this nightmare again without him by her side. Because he is strong, because he carries her, and she feels like her life – her fairytale – where she is blissfully happy with him and her baby is slipping through her fingers once more.

He clutches the wall, clutches desperately in order to keep himself upright. His eyes flutter close and then open again to connect with hers, to try and find her through the doctors and nurses pushing her bed out the door. But all he can see is the red liquid, the blood pooling at her feet and running down her legs, and the panic that causes his knees to buckle and his chest to constrict is robbing him of air.

He doesn't know how to ask about what's happening, but he knows it's bad because the last time he held a pregnant Blair in his arms and there was this much blood—

Chuck tells himself not to go there, tells himself to focus on being the man his father never was. He pushes away from the wall, propels himself out of the room in a frantic chase after his wife. And even though he's not a runner, he manages to catch up and follow directly on the heels on Doctor Picoult.

He can see only the top of her head and the swell of her belly, but he can hear all the words he doesn't want to hear in relation to his wife and his unborn child, in relation to his lifeblood and his hope – hemorrhaging, baby in distress, emergency, NICU. And then doors are opening and two people in scrubs intercept him, push him back, and tell him he can't enter as Blair disappears from his view.

He wants to scream, wants to demand that he be let in there, but the words that have worked so well in the past become lodged in his throat. After all, he's not Chuck Bass without Blair Waldorf.

So all he can do is stand on the other side of the door and wait, watch helplessly as the corridor leading to the operating room empties of people heading in to help his wife. He's never felt more alone in his life, never felt more anguish than he does now. He watches and waits, curses and cries.

The mere minutes feel like hours, like days, and then an unidentifiable person wearing a mask and a gown and a cap is pushing open the door.

"Why aren't you dressed?"

The hissed question may be directed at him, but he doesn't know the answer and the interrogator seems more preoccupied with opening the drawers of carts parked in the hallway to listen. Folded blue fabric is thrust into his hands, and he looks at it quizzically for just a moment before the giver hisses for him to put the scrubs on right now.

He moves quickly such that he nearly falls when the fabric gets caught on his shoe as he tries to yank on the scrubs over his pants. He peels off his coat, abandons it in a ball in the middle of the hallway so he can pull the shirt on over his own. A cap is placed on his head, and then he's being told to follow the nurse or doctor or whoever this person is into the operating room.

"There's going to be a sheet up," the person leading him says. "If you can see over it, don't."

He half-expects to step inside the room only to turn and flee because he's weak and that's what he did the last time he was led into a hospital room to say goodbye. But this is Blair and he would give up everything and do anything for her.

He spots her even before the person who came to fetch him points her out, and the instructions to keep his head down don't matter because he only has eyes for her. Chuck moves towards her, looks for any kind of sign that's she is still with him as he comes closer.

"Blair," he whispers. Her eyes meet his, and his knees finally give out over what he sees. The stool strategically set beside her head catches him, but he never once loses eye contact with her as he falls.

He wants to hold her hand, needs to feel the reassurance of her fingers laced into his. But her arms are strapped down, and so he settles for placing his hand against her cheek. Replaces his fingers with his cheek when it isn't enough.

The sterile antiseptic that had been assaulting his senses is replaced by the smell of her, by the sound of his heart beating inside her. Because that's what she is – his heart. And he doesn't know if he can live without it once more.

The numbness spreads through her body, and she doesn't know if it is the drugs or the pain or the heartbreak that makes her feel this way. But she cannot feel Chuck's cheek pressed against hers, cannot feel his lips pucker against her skin through the scratchy medical mask one of the nurses forces him to wear. She knows he's there; she can see him. But she's so frozen that she cannot cry or talk or do anything but lie there in shock over how quickly everything is happening.

The words "cord prolapse" are spoken in harsh tones, in degrees of shock and awe because what are the odds both that and a placental abruption would happen to the same woman, what are the odds both would happen to Blair Waldorf Bass? Her brain pulls at the words, frantically connects them to the scariest pages of the pregnancy book at home, and throws her back to the memory of reading it late at night and trying not to panic as she climbed into bed, as she wrapped herself around her husband, as she tried to tell herself it wasn't going to happen to them.

But it is so she turns her head and presses her face further into his, closes her eyes and tries not to wonder how they will handle coming home to a room decorated in hope and joy, to a bassinet at the foot of their bed with nothing to place there. Because she's done that before – come home only to find a tiny outfit she purchased on a whim still hidden in the drawer of her vanity – and running away to Monaco isn't an option this time.

"Blair," Doctor Picoult calls out from behind the screen thrown up to block out her view of the blood and the gore and the birth of her baby. Her eyes open at the sound of her name, and Chuck's head lifts at the sound of his. "Chuck, Blair, he's not going to cry, okay? Don't wait for him to cry. Just stay calm and breathe slowly."

And then the numbness disappears, replaced by the tightening in her chest as tears begin to wrack her body because if her baby cannot cry, then she will cry for him. She cries for him through the extreme pressure in her lower abdomen as he is yanked unceremoniously from her body, cries for him when Doctor Picoult calls for the NICU specialist standing by to take over, and cries for him when she realizes that the sheet thrown up to block her view of the birth of her baby is more likely meant to block her view of something else entirely.

Because no one is announcing that her baby is a boy or wishing him a happy birthday or asking what his name is. Because no one is congratulating Chuck on becoming a father or cooing over how beautiful her son is or announcing how much he weighs. And even with the sounds of doctors and nurses working on her and working on her baby, the silence is deafening.

She turns her head, tries to see her baby as they carry him across the room. But everything is just a whirl of blue, and no one is letting them see their baby or calling Chuck over to cut the cord like the hospital staff said they would during the preparatory class and tour of Lenox Hill. And she wonders if the silence is her answer, if the silence—

The sound that cuts through it all is not the loud, boisterous cry she would expect. It's pitiful and painful, more like the whimper of weak animal than the cry of a healthy baby. And her heart shatters into a million pieces, falls and rattles around in her quaking chest as the tiny moan ceases, as the silence fills her ears again.

The walls are caving in on him, and he doesn't have to hear that his son received a four on his initial Apgar test to know that things are bad. Because that sound – that horrific sound – keeps echoing in his ears. He vacillates between wanting the baby to cry, wanting to hear him so he knows his son will be okay and not wanting the baby to cry, not wanting to fall even more in love. Because this time is different; because he doesn't know how he's going to be there for Blair after the baby if—

Doctor Picoult curses and his attention is immediately dragged away from those blocking his view of the baby, from those working on his son without commentary to the team of doctors working on his wife. The doctor that assured them through every fear, every appointment is suddenly panicked and worried and cursing over the fact that Blair's incision has reopened. Half of those in the room come running back to aid Doctor Picoult in helping his wife, and his concern is divided all over again, split between his wife and son once more.

"Blair, I know it's scary but I need you to stay calm," Doctor Picoult announces, taking a moment to peek over the screen at her patient. The doctor knows her words are not working, shifts her gaze to look at the petrified man sitting next to her patient. "Chuck, please, I need you to get her to calm down."

And he wants to laugh because he winds her up more than anyone else in the whole world, and often times the best way to calm her down is the way that got her in this position in the first place. But then he feels guilty, flushes with shame because now is not the time for jokes and laughter.

He moves quickly, rips off his mask even though he knows he's probably not supposed to, and presses his lips against the corner of her right eye to catch her tears. The saltiness of her tears assaults his lips, assaults his control, and all the can do is hold onto the thing that tethers them together and holds them both through all the good and the bad.

"I love you," he whispers into her ear. "I love you."

He strokes her cheek, tries to lock away his fears as he attempts to calm her down. And she just stares at him with silent tears in her eyes and no words on her lips as her body stops shaking, as she watches him carry her through the pain of waiting to hear their baby cry.

For the five minutes that feel like five years, they stare at one another and allow their eyes to do all the talking. Allow his fingers stroking her cheek and the way her head turns and searches out his warmth to say all that needs to be said. And neither of them allows the other to look away, to doubt for even one moment as they wait an eternity for their shared outcome

He misses the way the doctors and nurses working on his wife and his son begin to thin out, begin to slow their frantic pace as the hands of the clock on the wall tick through the passing of time. He misses the shift from emergency mode to control, from panic to confidence because all he can do is continue to stare at his wife and blink back the tears welling up in his eyes.

The wail – the loud, healthy sounding cry – catches him off guard, and he turns his head to finally see a glimpse of the baby. His son is red all over; his face scrunched up in anger over the way he's being poked and prodded. And Chuck's first thought is not to thank God for a healthy baby but that his son sounds a hell of a lot like an angry Blair.

"Mister Bass, do you want to come over and meet your son?"

She nods her head for him to go, wants to scream at him to run as his fingers slip away from her face. She turns her head, but most of her view is obstructed by the sheet hung above her and she can't see anything other than the color blue. So all she can do is focus on that cry – that beautiful, wonderful cry that takes her breath away and causes a fresh round of tears to cascade down her face.

The unfamiliar doctor working on her son announces that the baby received a nine on his Apgar retest, and she thinks that must be a good sign because the nurses and the doctors seem happier, lighter with that news. They aren't relaxed – not by a long shot – but she can hear the cry, hear the news, and hear her husband's voice catch in his throat as he sees their son, falls in love, and completely becomes a father. And so she closes her eyes and listens to those sounds because they are the ones that hold her and carry her and support her.

The wheels of the stool by her head scraping across the floor causes her eyes to fly open, and misty eyes connect with misty eyes as her husband sinks down to sit next to her. Chuck fumbles with the keys of his BlackBerry, moves his phone to hoover just above her face. And she's never been more thankful for how attached she and her husband and her friends are to their cell phones, how Gossip Girl conditioned them all to have their cell phones on hand than she is when her husband pulls up the three photos he snapped.

"Blair, he's…he's amazing."

She's too stunned, too frozen to reply, but the word choice is all wrong. Because she is amazing and Chuck is the better man, but their son is perfection and whether he gets a four or a nine is never going to change that. And she wants to comment on how he has Chuck's jaw and her rosebud lips and all the perfect pieces that make him whole. But all she can do is marvel over how her baby boy is here as Chuck flips from one photo to the next on an endless loop.

"Test results came back negative."

The words steal her attention because she wants to know what the test was, whether negative or positive is good. Everyone around the new parents seem to relax with those words, but only when Doctor Picoult leans over the curtain and congratulations them on the birth of their son, on their lucky little miracle does she start to believe that this nightmare might be ending.

"We're almost done here," Doctor Pcioult assures them. "Everything looks good."

Her eyes connect with Chuck's, and she watches the way the fear begins to melt out of his expression. He leans over, places a kiss against her temple, and murmurs three words, eight letters in her ear once more.

"Mister Bass," the doctor that called him over to meet the baby interrupts. Two brunette heads turn to see the man in a blue gown holding a buddle wrapped in white with just the point of a blue hat peeking out of the top standing next to them. "Would you like to hold your son and introduce him to his mommy?

She waits anxiously as the baby is passed from the doctor to her husband, waits anxiously for Chuck to finally make a move towards her. He moves slowly because he's never held a baby before. Not the real kind, at least. Only the plastic ones at that class he and Blair went to one night. And he was expecting Blair to teach him because she's held Ana and Leo and she was supposed to hold the baby first.

So Chuck moves slowly whilst she waits anxiously, looks to the doctor for guidance as he holds his son to his chest for just a moment before holding the baby out to her. His long, strong fingers tenderly cup the baby's head as he moves the baby closer to her, moves so the face she's spent the last thirty-four weeks dreaming about is placed beside hers.

The love she feels in that moment is unconditional and unending; surges through her with such force that she becomes overwhelmed by it. She learned at seventeen what it is like to feel consumed by love, to see someone and know they hold your heart in their hand. And now at twenty-two she's learning what it is like to feel your heart is living outside your body, to see someone and know they are the physical manifestation of the all-consuming, great love she shares with Chuck.

The great loves are the crazy ones, and this might be the craziest one of them all as it propels her forward, gives her the strength she needs to speak for the first time since this ordeal began.

"Hello," she greets with a soft, tender kiss against her son's redden cheek. His mouth opens as he squirms almost as though he is trying to greet her in return, and she cannot help the smile and the glow that takes over at the sight of him. "Hello, Henry."


	10. October 17, 2013

**Author's Note: **I was completely blown away by the response to the last chapter so thank you so much for that. Apologies for the delay, but this week is also Chair Week and I found myself inspired by Sunday and Monday's prompt.

* * *

_October 17, 2013_

His brain feels foggy, his eyelids feel heavy, and his head hit the pillow only moments ago, but the cry pierces through his fatigue and beckons him towards the bassinet at the foot of the bed. The duvet tucked around him is pushed aside, and the cold air nips at his exposed extremities as he slides his hand across the mattress. His fingers snag the hem of his wife's pajamas, snag to pull her back down to the mattress.

"I've got him," he murmurs. And then he's sliding out of bed and his feet are hitting the floor as he runs a hand through his hair with an exhausted sigh. The wail grows louder, and he stumbles the few steps it takes him to reach the bassinet.

The baby's hands are flailing; the soft blanket in which he was swaddled in only moments ago having fallen open and allowing his tiny limbs to escape. The features of his face are scrunched, his mouth is open wide with a never ending wail, and everything about him is red and angry and indignant over his perceived abandonment.

One large hand slides under the baby and gingerly cups his head, gingerly cups his body and lifts the baby upward to be placed against his shoulder. The cry grows louder despite the hand sliding up and down his back in a soothing gesture, despite the shushing noises being cooed in his ear.

"Is he wet?" A feminine voice questions softly from the bed. Chuck glances towards his wife, jostles the baby as he tries to ascertain the answer to Blair's question, but the wails become louder and he immediately goes back to comforting Henry.

"Maybe you should feed him," Chuck suggests with a yawn.

Blair shakes her head, reminds him that she just fed him less than two hours ago, but the baby's cries grow louder and they are both at their wits end. She slowly, sleepily pushes herself up in a bed before reaching behind to adjust the pillows previously under her head against the headboard. Her fingers heavy with a blanket of sleep deprivation make slow work of the row of buttons down her pajama top, but eventually push aside the fabric to expose heavy, large breasts and the curvature of a tummy that has not flattened out as quickly as she thought it would.

But she is too tired to push and press and protest tonight, too focused on watching her husband rejoin her in bed and gingerly place the baby against her breast. Henry squirms and fights yet his parents work in tandem to hold him, to move a pillow under his body to support him. And when his mother cannot entice him to latch on, his father's soft fingers lift her engorged flesh and trace the nipple against Henry's lips in encouragement for the little baby to latch on.

His tiny lips wrap around his mother's nipple, but his suction is weak and lasts for all but two minutes before he detaches himself, turns his head away, and screams louder and harder and angrier. And his mother would feel self-righteous in her correctness over how he was not hungry were not for the fact that this is her baby, that this is her perfect little boy who just seems so unhappy with the world.

She had waited soul crushing moments to hear him cry, to hear him do anything other than let out a weak and tiny moan. Yet now all he does is cry and scream and wail and she finds herself at a loss for how to make him stop. And her fatigue and her frustrations are pushing her over the edge until more than just her breasts are leaking, until her cries become the echo to his.

And then Chuck is rubbing his hand up and down in a soothing gesture against her arm, whispering comforting words in her ears as he tries to calm her down. But his words are lost against his son and his wife's cries and tears, and he shifts away from her for just a moment so he can push aside the duvet and take a seat beside her.

"Let me," he says as he slides the baby out of her arms, and he presses a kiss against her temple when she loosens her grip on the infant. He creates a space between his legs and lays Henry down gently on the mattress; unfurls the blanket wrapped around his son's tiny body and concentrates his attention on trying to soothe one of those currently in tears.

"I'm a terrible mother," she cries. He stops in his efforts for just a moment, stops to look at her as she tugs on the shirt of her pajamas and fumbles with the buttons.

"You're not," he assures her. He pauses in his efforts to unsnap the buttons of Henry's romper, pauses to lift her hand to his lips. "You are an amazing mother, Blair."

"Then why won't he stop crying?" She asks in a voice that sounds more like a wail, in a voice that carries over the sound of Henry's screams. He has no answer for her because it is the question he has asked himself for weeks, asked each day since they brought Henry home over a month ago.

"Blair," he begins softly, but the indignant wail of his son cuts him off and he looks from him to her and back again as his sleep addled brain tries to figure out what to do. But Blair is sliding out of bed, padding towards the en-suite bathroom, and Henry is lying between his legs, screaming and crying, and he goes with the one that is closer to him.

He bends tiny elbows and little knees as he slides Henry's body free from the onesie, and even in his exhaustion he marvels over how tiny and perfect this little boy is. How he and the love of his life managed to create something so pure and wonderful – and loud – out of their love for one another. And he swallows the thoughts because they are his own, because they are only meant to be whispered in the ear of the woman who matters most. Because Chuck Bass is a romantic and only Blair Waldorf-Bass needs to know that.

And then he pauses for just a moment because Henry matters the most as well, because one day Henry Bass will learn that his father – the notorious playboy, the man who messed up over and over again, the dark knight – is a romantic.

But the cry pulls him out of his thoughts, and he finds himself murmuring soothing words as he places one hand against the baby's naked belly to hold him still. Chuck leans towards the nightstand, reaches into the top drawer, and pulls out a tube of lotion. He squirts a small dollop in the palm of his hand, rubs his palms together to warm up the cool cream after tossing the tube aside, and then he gingerly rubs the lotion into Henry's already soft skin.

His fingers fly over Henry's limbs as he searches out knots, as he searches out points of tension because massages calm down Henry's mother and the two are more alike than she thinks. And he manages to get Henry to quiet for a moment, for just long enough that Blair pokes her head out of the bathroom and looks at him with teary-eyed amazement. But his efforts are eventually shown to be futile, and the little baby is being scooped up into his mother's arms as she reminds his father not to use anything with chemicals or perfumes on his delicate skin.

"Why did you undress him?" Blair hisses as she snatches the soft baby blanket and wraps Henry up to ward off the chill of the evening air. Their bedroom is warm, kept at a constant temperature, but she worries about her son and is always fussing about hats and socks and gloves under the guise of accessorizing. "He's going to get cold."

She lays him back on the bed, bends tiny elbows and little knees as she slides Henry's body into the onesie. He continues to cry; his face becomes redder and redder in protest over how he is being manhandled and jostled about. And then halfway done with the snaps running from his knee to his chin, she pauses and her own tears begin to fall again.

"Henry, it's okay," she promises as she raises a hand and wicks away the tear rolling down her cheek. Her shoulders slump with a dejected sigh, and she looks to her husband with a resigned look on her face. "Maybe we should hire—"

"I've got him," Chuck promises as he moves his hand to replace hers, as he moves to complete the row of snaps. "I'll go downstairs and walk him around."

"It won't help," she replies, shaking her head. She's tried that so many times before – tried rocking him and singing to him and holding him night after night, day after day.

"What else is there for us to do?"

She doesn't know how to answer Chuck's question. She's called Henry's pediatrician, asked Dorota, and scoured the internet for advice, and every source tells her the same thing – let him cry himself to sleep, don't pick him up, he has just a touch of colic.

"Maybe he's—"

She cuts herself off because she knows that if he would just sleep, if he would just close his eyes for five minutes, then they would all feel better. But Henry is not having it no matter how she holds him or swaddles him or loves him. And then she's crying again, frantically wiping away the tears that cloud her view of her little boy who cries all the time and barely sleeps and her husband who is just as lost as she is.

"He just needs to sleep," she announces. "He just needs to sleep like he did in the hospital, like he did on the drive home."

There is a moment of pause before her eyes dart towards her husband's just as his dart towards hers, just as the same thought crosses their minds. Chuck reaches towards the cell phone on the nightstand, prays he remembered to plug it in long enough to have the necessary battery life to complete one call. He calls the number near the top of his speed dial and raises the phone to his ear as his wife raises the baby to her chest and sways softly as she waits.

"You're going to sleep, Henry," she whispers to the baby as her husband instructs the man on the other end of the call. "And then you'll feel better and Mommy and Daddy will feel better because you'll be happy."

"He'll be here in five minutes," Chuck informs her as he ends the call, as he sets the cell phone onto the nightstand.

She nods and offers him a small appreciative smile in response as he moves to retrieve their coats from their closets. He snatches another baby blanket off the chaise lounge in the corner before draping her coat around her shoulders and the blanket around their son. And then she follows him down the winding staircase from the fifth floor to the first floor, from their bedroom to the front door.

Chuck grabs the carseat used only once before out of the closet off the foyer, readies the myriad of straps and buckles, and holds it steady as she gently places the screaming infant into the carseat. She strokes her baby's cheek and fervently hopes this works as she sets about snapping the buckles and adjusting the straps. Blankets are tucked around Henry's body, and the hat covering his downy soft hair is adjusted despites his protests and cries.

His father hoists the carseat off the ground, holds it in his hand as he opens the door for his wife before stepping outside and locking it behind them. And then he follows her out to the street, passes the carseat to her when she is seated inside, and moves to join her. The partition is already lowered, and the question is asked as they check and double check the lock of the carseat to the base strapped to the bench seat.

"Where to, Mister Bass?"

"Just drive, Arthur," he instructs with a yawn. "Around the block, through the Park, to Brooklyn – just drive."

The chauffer nods his head, raises the partition that separates him from the piercing cries of the product of previous limo rides, and pulls the car away from the curb in front of his employers' townhouse. Traffic is light – almost none existent – given the time of night, and he easily completes multiple loops around the city. And when the sun starts to peek between the buildings, when Arthur hesitantly lowers the partition to ask if this was enough of 'just driving', the scene he sees in his rearview mirror in one he hoped to see since he drove Mister Bass and Miss Waldorf home from a burlesque show at the age of sixteen and nearly seventeen, respectively.

Because in the backseat of the limo is Chuck Bass and Blair Waldorf-Bass holding hands with heads pressed together as they slumber and their infant son sound asleep in his carseat enjoying his ride in his daddy's limo.


	11. November 28, 2013

_November 28, 2013_

The BlackBerry in her coat pocket vibrates as the personalized ringtone for her new employer plays over and over again. She fumbles for the phone, stops walking as she digs into her coat pocket. She doesn't need to look at the caller ID to know who is phoning her yet old habits die hard and she confirms the name with what she is hearing.

"Don't you dare answer that BlackBerry, Dorota!"

"But Miss Blair," Dorota retorts in an attempt to reason with the woman walking two paces in front of her. Her argument is silenced when Blair whirls on her heels and snaps at the maid.

"If you value your green card, you won't answer that phone!"

Blair turns around, continues walking down the sidewalk with her purse swinging from the crook of her arm. Dorota scurries after Blair, clutching the ringing phone in her hand whilst muttering under her breath about being a citizen of this county.

"It's Thanksgiving," Dorota reminds her gently.

"And we have nothing to be thankful for!" Blair yells as she stomps angrily around the corner. "This is the worst Thanksgiving of all time, and if we have to wander the Upper East Side like outcasts in a Jane Austen novel so be it!"

"It's cold out, Miss Blair," Dorota says gently as she hurries to catch up with her employer. She cuts her off by pushing the pram directly in front of Blair's path. "Mister Henry not prepared to be outcast in Austen novel."

Blair features morph from anger as she wavers in her plan. She lifts the corner of the cashmere blanket draped over the visor of the pram, leans in hesitantly to gaze at the sleeping baby tucked inside. Henry is layered against the cold in a white onesie, a soft red sweater, a pair of brown pants, a coat, and two blankets with a hat on his tiny head and mittens on his little hands.

His mother runs the back of her finger across his plump cheek. He looks quite warm to her; maybe too warm based on the flush across his cheeks. She glances up from the baby to the maid, hardens her softened feature into a glare.

"Don't try to use my maternal instincts against me," she snaps at the maid. She stands and pulls the blanket back over the pram making sure to completely ward off the November chill as her eyes sweep down the street. Dorota spots a coffee shop still open down the street and points the place out to Miss Blair as a compromise for her concern over Henry's well-being.

"Fine. I am not a monster. We will take Henry inside for a moment," she informs the maid with a pause before flouncing off. "But if I think for one minute you are enjoying your scone, we're leaving."

The frustration is evident across Dorota's face as she pushes the pram after her employer, and she mutters under her breath in Polish as she hurries to catch up with Miss Blair. She falls into step after a moment, walks in silence alongside her for a moment before moving in front as Blair halts in the middle of the sidewalk.

Dorota turns to look back over her shoulder and watch as Blair's features soften in surprise and then harden in determination again at the sight in front of her. The maid turns her head again at the sound beside her, turns her head again to see Mister Chuck's limo slowing to a stop on the curb beside them. The door is wrenched open without waiting for Arthur, and Dorota watches curiously as Chuck strides towards them.

"Blair," he begins, but Blair scoffs in reply and turns to walk away.

"Dorota!" Blair calls after her, and the maid glances from Blair to Chuck as she tries to figure out what to do. With a sigh, she turns the pram and starts to follow Blair back in the direction from which they came because she works for Miss Blair – she has always worked for Miss Blair – and she will wander the Upper East Side like outcast in a Jane Austen novel if that is what Miss Blair wants. But Chuck stops her, stops the pram by stepping in front of it.

"Dorota, you can follow Blair all over Manhattan, but I'm taking Henry home," he calmly informs the maid. Dorota's hands tighten reflexively, defensively against the handle of the pram, and she wavers in her protectiveness as Chuck pulls his coat tighter against the chill of the November air. "It's too cold outside for him."

He moves the blanket aside and reaches in to scoop up the baby. Large, strong hands cradle the infant's head as Chuck lays him against his chest, and he snatches one of the blankets to wrap around Henry as he soothingly rubs the baby's back.

"What are you doing?" Blair hisses as she moves up the street, moves to his side.

"I'm taking Henry back—"

"To the office?" She interjects. Chuck sighs in frustration, sweeps his eyes down to his son before looking back up at his wife.

"Come home, Blair. Everything is set up for dinner and dessert," he suggests before dropping his voice into a low and suggestive tone. "And you know how much I enjoy your pie."

Blair's eyes narrow at his suggestion, and she is just about to tell him to give her back her baby when he reaches out and touches her chin. His thumb traces the line of her jaw, traces the bone of her cheek softly in the hopes of cracking her icy exterior.

"It's Thanksgiving, Blair," her husband reminds her.

"And you went to the office and Daddy, Roman and Mother and Cyrus stayed in France. Serena is busy in Brooklyn with Dan, and—"

"And I'm sorry," he apologizes softly. "I had something I needed to finish, and I thought I'd be back before you and Henry finished watching the parade together. But this is our first Thanksgiving as Mister and Mrs. Bass and Henry's first ever. I want it to be good for both of you. So come home and celebrate with me today. You can punish me tomorrow."

She wavers with his words, wavers further as his thumb traces her jaw, and changes her mind completely when Henry stirs against his father's chest as the cold wind nips at his exposed cheeks. She nods her head, stalks towards the limo, and calls for Dorota to hurry up as Chuck opens the back door of the limo for her. Henry is passed into her arms and she places him into the waiting carseat whilst Chuck assists Dorota in putting the pram in the trunk of the car.

"I'm still mad at you," she informs Chuck as he takes his seat beside her.

"I know," he replies softly as the car pulls away from the curb.

He laces his fingers with hers, brings them up to his lips to kiss and mask his knowing smirk. She pulls her fingers from his and turns her attention away from him towards the baby seated next to her. Henry's eyes flutter open and close as the movement of the limo lulls him back to sleep, and she strokes his cheek softly in affection.

The ride to their townhouse is shorter than the looping walk she and Dorota originally went on, and the limo pulls up to the curb in front in no time. Arthur is left to fumble with the pram as Dorota rushes head to open the front door of the townhouse. Blair carries Henry, allows Chuck to press his hand against the small of her back and guide her through the front door and up the first set of stairs to the second floor.

The sound of soft voices and laughter causes her to pause, causes her to freeze at the top of the stairs and stare out in amazement at the collection of people assembled in their living room. She sweeps her eyes towards her husband and watches as a smile spread across his features over her surprise.

"Blair Bear!" Harold greets when he notices her and Chuck standing at the top of the stairs. He sets his glass of champagne down onto one of the side tables and pulls everyone else's attention towards the host and hostess of the evening as he moves towards them.

"Daddy," Blair says softly as her father hugs her. Harold grins against her cheek as he places a soft peck against him, and his smile widens as he gazes at the infant laying against Blair's shoulder.

"Oh, Blair, he's so much bigger than the last time we saw him. And so handsome," Harold gushes as he tenderly strokes the Henry's back. "Must be the Waldorf nose. Roman, didn't I tell you that Henry had my nose?"

Roman nods in agreement, greets Blair excitedly once Harold has slipped the baby out of Blair's arms and carried him off to be cooed over by his grandparents. He murmurs in her ear about a pie brought all the way from Paris left in the kitchen before moving away to join the crowd of people admiring the littlest member of their family.

Chuck murmurs about needing a drink as other members of the party approach him and his wife, and he disappears to find the bar set up in his absence. He orders himself a scotch, stands near the bar beside Nate and Nate's father, and sips it slowly as he watches Henry be passed from grandparent to grandparent, all of whom admire his delicate features and his smart little clothes. Minor squabbles over which grandparent he looks like the most are pushed aside when Henry opens his eyes and basks in their praise just as his mother so often did as a child.

"Happy Thanksgiving, B," Serena says as she pulls her friend into a hug. "Rufus and Dan are in the kitchen. They wanted to cook Thanksgiving dinner together this year and when Chuck called – well, I had to find a compromise."

And for once Blair doesn't mind that Rufus and Dan are in her kitchen, that the Humphreys are more than likely making a mess as they attempt to use kitchen gadgets they cannot afford because she is far too focused on the other aspects of Serena's sentence to care. Everyone she loves is assembled in her living room; everyone she loves is here to celebrate her favorite holiday with her after they all cancelled or declined to come.

"Chuck called you?" Blair questions her best friend. Serena nods, begins to answer when another feminine voice interrupts them as she breezes towards them and joins their conversation.

"Yes, Charles sent the jet and called repeatedly to make sure we were all on the plane from Paris in time," Eleanor replies. "He took us all to task for forgetting that everyone should be where they belong on Thanksgiving – with their families."

"He sent the limo to pick up Dan and I in Brooklyn," Serena fills in. "And he told my mother she couldn't go to Saint Bart's until tomorrow. He loves you, B, and he—"

"Just wants me to be happy," Blair fills in softly. She excuses herself, moves across the room to grab Chuck's hand, and pull him away from the party towards the staircase leading to the other floors of their home.

"Chuck," Nate calls after him. "Any interest in watching the game with my dad and I?"

"When I get back," Chuck offers as a compromise.

"If he gets back," Blair corrects as she tugs him up the staircase. They stop at the third floor, and she pushes his back against the wall, presses her body against his, and cups his face between her hands. She strokes his cheek, slides her hands down to touch the nape of his neck. "You are a wonderful husband and father and man, and you make me the happiest I have ever been."

Any vague idea Chuck has of a single, short kiss disappears, drowns beneath the tide of passion her lips pressed against his evokes. She angles her lips against his, confidently taking possession of his soft mouth with a slow, plundering relentlessness that leaves him breathes when she finally lets go. His head falls back against the wall with a groan, and he eyes her through hooded lids as she continues to play with the hair at the nape of his neck.

"Thank you for doing this. Thank you for always trying to make me happy. And you – you and Henry," she amends, "are what I am most thankful for this year. Happy Thanksgiving, Chuck."


	12. December 2, 2013

**Author's Note**: Please note that this final chapter is rated M for the first part and drops down to a safer K+ after the line break. (I tried to keep it more accessible, but I am a sucker for those in bed moments.) If I tell you what this story means to me, I shall start to cry. If I tell you what your reviews and support has meant to me, I shall start to cry. So instead I will offer a simple thank you and express my hope that I have managed to do the first year of Chuck and Blair's marriage (and their first few months as parents to baby Henry) justice.

* * *

_December 2, 2013_

Her fingers claw at the sheets, grip tightly as her eyes squeeze shut behind the silk mask shielding her from the morning sun. Her mouth falls open and a breathy moan escapes, but the noise is smothered by the duvet over his head.

Yet he smiles against her thigh and continues to skim his lips against her skin because he knows what he cannot hear, knows her better than he knows himself. Her legs move to part further, move to open wider for him as she gives up any pretense of continuing to sleep.

And Chuck continues to taste her just as he wishes, to feast in that slow and thorough manner she has become accustomed to. He knows just how tightly to wind her up, knows when to ease back and lightly lap until she is left teetering and desperate against him. Her thighs tighten against him, try to hold him in place and spur him onward. And when he refuses, Blair's exasperation grows and she releases the sheets just long enough to slap her hand down against the duvet and force him to comply.

He chuckles darkly against her so that his hot breath tickles her, so that she grows wetter against his lips and his tongue. He keeps her there, holds her on the cusp for a moment longer, and then he gives in because the queen always gets what she wants from her king.

Chuck's grip against her hips slackens as her body does the same, and his fingers slide across her body to the line etched across her skin. He strokes the line as he moves forward and the duvet is thrown away from his head, and he looks at her with bright eyes and disheveled hair as he hoovers with puckered lips just above the mark on her skin.

She brushes him away, slides her hand down to prevent his lips from making contact with the scar. The redness has faded over time and it has recessed into her skin, but she can still feel it and still obsesses over it when she is dressing, when she thinks he's not looking. He catches her hand, squeezes her fingers, and moves her hand out of the way so his lips can finally make contact with the object of her derision.

"Good morning," he greets lazily, happily against her skin.

He raises himself up on his knees, preparing to trail kisses up her body past her bellybutton and her breasts to reach her lips, but her fingers thread through his hair and yank his lips away from her scar. And he knows she's about to chastise him for the attention he lavishes in a place she hates, and he closes his eyes for just a moment because he doesn't know how else to explain what this scar means to him.

The jolt he feels when her hand closes about him ends every thought in his head, and his eyes squeeze shut at the sensation. He cannot form the words much less say them as her grip eases and tightens simultaneously. Chuck hears her chuckle about how easy he is as she releases him, moves to sit on her knees, and press her body against his. She moves her lips to hoover just above his, to ghost and tease as her fingers which had been curled around him begin to stroke his neck, to touch the place that nearly—

The wail carried through the static of the baby monitor on the nightstand causes her to turn to her head, to stare at it in surprise as he falls back against the bed with a thump and an exasperated sigh. She wipes her hand across the front of his pajama top and then pulls down the hem of her negligée as her eyes dart across the bed to try and locate the panties he peeled off her sometime in the morning. Or maybe, she ponders, it was last night.

His fingers hold up the lacy fabric pulled out from under the heavy duvet, and she places a perfunctory kiss of gratitude and apology on his lips in response before sliding off the bed and out of his reach to pull them on. The white robe she tossed over the chaise lounge is hastily pulled on; her feet shoved into the slippers tucked under the chaise. And then she's heading out of their bedroom and down the stairs towards the source of the noise, leaving him on the bed staring up at the ceiling as he tries to steady and calm himself and his breathing.

Yet he cannot help but smile when he hears her greeting through the monitor, when he hears the crying cease as she lifts their little boy up, cuddles him close, and kisses away his tears. He listens for a moment, listens to her coo and soothe and then when he hears her ask their son if he wants to go upstairs and see what Daddy is up to, he gives up any idea of continuing what he started and slides off the bed to take a shower.

* * *

The nozzle is turned from cold to hot when he hears the door to their bathroom open, and his icy cold skin begins to turn red and angry as the glass door of the shower steams. The knock against the door causes him to turn his head, to wipe away the steam and see his wife and son standing just on the other side of the door. Over the sound of the running water, he can just barely hear her ask if he's cleaned up, and he pushes open the door in invitation as his reply.

A happy, naked Henry is passed into his hands, and he shields Henry's skin from the relentless beating of the water as Blair drops her robe and peels off her negligée and panties in preparation of joining them. She slides past him with a teasing smile, slides past to take his place under the showerhead, and she immediately flips the nozzle to a temperature that doesn't make her feel as though her skin is on fire.

Her hair becomes damp and then wet, hangs against her back and neck, and yet she does not step out from under the spray as she watches Chuck tickle his son's tiny foot and greet the little boy freshly awoken from his deep slumber. And Henry gurgles and grins in response as he kicks his feet, as his father places a kiss against his open lips.

"I hope you washed out your mouth," she says.

And he chuckles at her comment, although he can tell by her tone that she is still partially serious in her words. He bounces Henry in his arms so the little boy will smile wider, so the little boy will continue to be his happy self while his father kisses his mother, swipes his tongue against her lips and parts them until all she can taste is the minty freshness of mouthwash and toothpaste.

He smirks as he pulls away, laughs as she tries to follow him out of water for more, and she glares at him for attempting to pull her across the line she has so firmly established. She turns away from him, shows him her backside as she reaches for the bottle of shampoo, squeezes a drop into her hair, and then lathers it into her long brunette hair. And then she smirks as Chuck sighs in frustration behind her over her teasing display.

"Blair," he warns darkly, and she turns to watch him watch her as she ducks under the stream of water to wash out the shampoo. She waits just a moment, waits until all the shampoo is gone, and then she reaches behind her to turn down the water to a gentle trickle before tugging him and Henry under the water.

The little boy looks at her in surprise with wide eyes and an open mouth, and then he grins and kicks his legs because he has an affinity with the water. His father's grip tightens as he squirms, as his slippery body slides in his father's arm, as he tries to stare up at the water falling onto his head. Blair reaches up, cups the little baby's head in her hand, and strokes his quickly dampening hair as she smiles over the way he loves this part of their day.

"My little water baby," she coos at him. He looks directly at her, seems to absorb her words and add his agreement as he stuffs his fist into his mouth and rests his head against his daddy's broad chest. She kisses his check and then his ear and, finally, the small bald patch on the back of his head where his hair has rubbed away against the mattress.

Chuck gives him just a moment longer under the gentle spray, and then he steps away because he always worries that it's too much for his tiny baby. Henry fusses over the loss of contact with the water, over the way the air is beginning to chill against his skin as his father opens the glass door and steps out of the warm shower.

Henry's personal towel – the one with his initials monogramed on the hood for his small head – is wrapped around him to warm him, to shield him from the chill, and he is placed in the bouncy seat atop his mother's vanity just long enough for Chuck to wrap his own towel around his hips. The soft, fluffy towel is rubbed gently against Henry's skin in order to wick away the water before his father lays him out on the vanity, unfurls the towel, and secures a diaper in place. The romper he slept in last night is slipped back on him for now, and Henry is secured into the bouncy seat to wait and watch as his parents complete their morning routine.

This well-choreographed dance is performed for him every morning. Hair is blown dry and styled as he watches. Make-up is applied with one hand while the other gently bounces his seat to keep him calm and happy. Dresses and bowties are selected, held up for his approval, and then pulled on quickly as the timer on how content he is begins to run out.

Today, however, one parent's eyes dart across the room when the other is not looking, dart to try and see if a secret is being hidden, and the whole dance seems to take on a darker tone as the timer ticks closer and closer to the end. Today, there is a change in the choreography because his mother gingerly opens the jewelry box where she keeps her favorite pieces – the silver locket she received for her fifth birthday from her father, the string of pearls left to her by her grandmother on her mother's side, the Erickson Beamon necklace for her seventeenth birthday from her husband, and, of course, the two rings she cherishes above all – and finds the rings are no longer nestled in the spot designed specifically for them.

The panic starts to bubble inside her, starts to rise as she tries to remember what she did with her engagement and wedding rings. She distinctly remembers taking them off last night and placing them inside her jewelry box just as she has done every night for the past year. Blair raises her head to ask her husband if he's seen them, pauses when she spies him standing behind her in the mirror hanging above her vanity, and looks at him quizzically because the expression on his face is one she knows intimately – the tell-tale sign of Chuck Bass scheme in progress.

The rings are placed in front of her without a word, stacked one by one with her wedding ring on the bottom and the large engagement ring on the top. The question as to why he took them hangs on the tip of her tongue, but he answers her before she can even allow the first word to slip past her lips.

"I wanted to put your rings on you this morning just as I did a year ago today."

She sits stunned for just a moment, nods her head and holds out her hand in silent agreement. But his hands move to her hips, spin her on the stool until she is facing him and watching him with baited breath. And then ever so slowly he grasps her hand in his and sinks down on bended knee before her. The rings are picked up off the vanity and held reverently in his hand for just a moment as though he seems to be contemplating the significance of what these two bands mean.

There is no hesitation on his part as he slides on the Harry Winston engagement ring – the one she wore alone for only a few hours but was hers and hers alone from the day he bought it, from the day she said she was sure with a kiss and opened up the cocoons of a million butterflies. The wedding ring comes to rest beside the engagement ring on her finger and the act seems almost simple, but there is nothing simple about their love for one another.

He leans up to kiss her, and the press of his lips against her is soft and gentle, sweet and romantic because that's exactly who he is and it matters to him that she knows it. And when the kiss breaks, when he presses her forehead against hers with eyes closed and his thumb caressing the two bands on her finger, he whispers the only words he knows how to say in relation to who they are.

"Three words, eight letters. I'm yours," he affirms. He pauses and swallows. "This last year has proven that we could never be boring. Not as long as we're Chuck and Blair, Blair and Chuck."

His words are met with agreement on her part, with the nod of head against his and the dart of her tongue across her lips. But the whimper, the beginning of a cry for the other person in the room disputes his statement, and Blair amends his declaration for him with a soft laugh.

"Not as long as we're Chuck and Blair and Henry," she corrects, placing an emphasis on the final name to soothe over any hurt feelings that may linger and earning a smile from her husband.

He repeats them back to her, repeats the final name in a sort of reverence she still has not become accustomed to. Because while the idea of life with Chuck and Henry has quickly become unimaginable to her, Chuck still wakes up each morning, sees the evidence that he is Blair's husband and Henry's father, and revels in the realization that he is in fact living a dream – one he previously thought was lost to him forever, one he has lived and loved for the past year.

"Happy Anniversary."


End file.
